


Bought and Soulled

by Hello_Spikey



Series: Bitten, Bought, and Soulled [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, F/M, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-14
Updated: 2008-06-02
Packaged: 2019-06-11 08:33:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15311571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Spike is almost finished recovering from the brutal beating he received at the hands ofmy writinga pathetic human named Chuck. The continuation of an alternate Season 6 which is more...transactional in nature.Sequel to The Bite Whore.





	1. Hells Bells

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamsofspike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofspike/gifts).



> The Bite Whore which was a season 6 Spuffy written for **dreamsofspike**.
> 
> Now, "The Bite Whore" (such a dreadful title!) starts out during "As You Were" and goes AU from there with a few weeks worth of never-on-the-show stuffs. I have therefore decided that more time passes between "As You Were" and very next episode "Hells Bells" because this story starts in Hells Bells. It's Anya and Xander's wedding day!

Spike awoke to a hideous apparition of green taffeta.

“I look awful, don’t I? I look like… like attack of the asparagus people.” Buffy raised and lowered her arms at her sides helplessly.

“Y’ look green,” Spike conceded, blinking and lifting himself up on his elbows, trying to ascertain if this was still a dream. “Are we… formal this morning?”

“It’s the 20th,” Buffy said, like this would mean something to him.

Spike pushed him up to sitting properly, re-arranging his pillows. His arms were fully useful now, but his knees were still on the mend. (Tricky things, knees.) “And it’s, what? International dress like a lounge singer day?”

Buffy threw a monstrous corsage at him. “Xander and Anya’s wedding!”

“Oh.” Spike picked up the satin cabbage and fussed with it, wondering if maybe a few tweaks would make it look like a flower. “How much time do I have?”

“You have no time.” Buffy snatched the flower from his fingers. “You’re staying here. Dawn will check in on you before the ceremony and Clem promised to stop by during the reception.”

“Hey! I got an invite fair and square. And there’s good odds there’ll be a brawl, if the rest of Xander’s relatives are anything like his folks. Don’t want to miss it.”

“Oh SO not letting you go now,” Buffy said to the mirror as she re-fastened her corsage. “You could barely move yesterday.”

“That was yesterday.”

“And I’m going to let you get in a fight today?” She turned to face him, hands on bright-green satin hips.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed – see how healed I am? “No fights. Fine. Find me a sodding wheelchair and I’ll be the paragon of bland.”

“As if you could be,” Buffy smiled. “Don’t get up and hurt yourself. I have to go pick up Willow.”

“Buffy!” He grabbed her wrist. She glared and jerked her arm from his grasp. He said, “Let me go with you.”

“You’re not going, Spike. And you’re not going ‘with’ me.” She put her hand on his, an unspoken apology. “It’s for your own good.”

He looked up at her, and the serious weight of his gaze nearly floored her. He put his hand over hers. “We had a chance to be normal, once, didn’t we? No, we did. Remember back before all this? Remember the song and dance? Not my proudest moment, maybe, but there we were, yeah? Kissing. No angst, no fight, just a kiss.”

She stepped back. “That was just the spell. Musicals end on a kiss. It was probably random selection.”

“Bugger that. You kissed me. And I kissed you and it wasn’t no one-sided thing.”

“Spike, I have to go. There’s no time for this. Besides, it meant nothing.”

“Wasn’t nothing to me. We were coming together – admit it. Talking like friends, allies, and the occasional snog. I just feel like, if I’d done something different, maybe not said half the stupid things I said, we could have been together for real.”

“This is real. Whatever it is, it isn’t pretty, but it’s real. We’re real.”

“No, we aren’t. And you know it. You’re only with me because we have this unspoken agreement, you and I, that it isn’t going to last, not after the sex. I’m your secret, your dirty habit…”

“It’s not all me.” She threw up her arms. “You… you hurt me, Spike. And you know you do. Not just with your words, but everything. Every time I’m with you, I can feel myself eroding away.”

“No. No, Buffy…” He reached to stop her from leaving and stumbled, accidentally putting weight on his damaged knee. To his own relief, Buffy hurried back to help him resume his seat on the bed. “What if I’d played hard to get?”

When she recovered enough to close her jaw, Buffy said, “You? Hard to get?”

“Yeah. That night in the abandoned house. You finally made a move and I went for it like a two dollar whore. What if I’d been man enough to turn you down? Think you might still want me, then, might respect me a little, and we could have had something real.”

“Come on. You? Turn ME down?” She pulled out his pillow and vigorously fluffed it.

“I’m not sayin’ it’s at all possible. Just tryin’ to figure out where we went wrong.”

“We went wrong at you being evil. Sit up.”

He leaned forward obediently and she set the pillow behind him. “That’s not fair, Buffy! By your definition I can’t ever NOT be evil.”

She wrung her hands, feeling the lack of anything more to do with them. “I know.”

“But I can! I keep trying, Buffy. Look, I got a list. Not written down or anything, but it’s a start. I know – no killing anyone human, right? No killing any demons don’t deserve it, either.”

“You CAN’T kill anyone.”

“Nothing stopping me from setting traps. Nothing stopping me from hiring some bloke to shoot ‘em dead. Nothing stopping me from snacking on the dead or licking wounds from the dying.”

Her face was aghast.

“I’m saying I WON’T do those things. Bloody hell, slayer, I wouldn’t do those things from the START. Before I realized I love you. S’not me.”

“You want some kind of partial credit for not being a complete monster?”

“I’m saying I don’t have to be a monster at all. Don’t you get it? They take your soul, not your brain. I still make decisions. Me. I choose to do what I do, and I can choose not to. I can be good, if you give me half a chance.”

There was a throat-clearing sound. Dawn leaned in the doorway. “Well isn’t this an awkward interrupting moment,” she said. “Buffy, we’re running late!”

“Just checking up on Spike,” Buffy said, with a false smile and a harder-than-necessary pat on his shoulder.

“Right. That’s what you’re calling it this week? Buffy, come on, or we’ll have to rely on Mrs. Rosenberg’s eco-friendly make-up.”

Buffy dragged Dawn into the hall. Spike exhaled hard through his nose. To eavesdrop or not to eavesdrop? Well, it was only evil if they found out, right?

He closed his eyes and just caught Buffy’s whispered, “… sure he doesn’t leave.”

Dawn spoke quite loudly, unconcerned with being overheard. “What am I, the vampire sitter? You said I could ride in with you and Willow.”

“Dawnie!” Buffy shushed her sister. “He could hurt himself.”

“Please. This is the flammable guy who smokes. Besides, it’s been two weeks. How long after Glory ripped his insides out was he up and leading the great run-away plan? That was like five DAYS.”

Buffy’s voice got even quieter and Spike had to scoot to the end of the bed, straining to hear.

“Fine!” Dawn snapped, and stomped all the way down the hall back to the bedroom.

Spike hurried to scoot back to the top of the bed and winced as he moved his leg too quickly.

Dawn took one look at his grimace and sighed dramatically. “Oh yeah, you’re jail-break material.”

Spike settled back against his pillow. “Didn’t want to go anyway. Probably be boring as hell.” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “Scratch that. Hell’s probably an interesting place. Boring as Heaven.”

Dawn turned her head, listening to her sister gathering items from the master bedroom, where she had been partially crashing wile Spike convalesced in her bed. (Willow had temporarily resumed her residence with her parents, citing Buffy’s need and the pervasive Tara-ness of the room she had shared with the good witch.)

“What’d she say to you, Bit?” Spike asked.

“Stay and make sure the vampire doesn’t get himself hurt,” Dawn frowned. “Like, duh? You were listening in, weren’t you?”

“Heard you stick up for me. What made you change your mind?”

Dawn fidgeted uncomfortably with the green organdy ruffles on her dress.

“Said it was more than the physical damage, did she?”

One hand twisted helplessly in her shoulder ruffle, Dawn looked helplessly through the walls as though she could summon Buffy to aid her. “There’s going to be lots of humans at the wedding. Normal humans.”

“So?” Spike bundled the blankets and pushed them aside. “I’m not scared, if that’s what you’re asking. HELL if I’m letting that wanker put fear into me. What happened… happened, all right? I am not scared.” He lowered his brows. “An’ I’m not hiding behind the slayer’s skirts until, what? All the humans die out?”

She came to a decision, shaking her long hair back from her shoulders. “You’re right,” she said.

“Darn straight I’m right, I…” he noticed the odd look on Dawn’s face. “Niblet?” Dawn hummed noncommittally and examined her fingernails with exaggerated care. Spike raised an eyebrow. “What is going through that delinquent little head of yours?”

“Three… two…” The back door shut, downstairs, just audible as Buffy’s footsteps hurried across the porch and down to the driveway. Dawn pushed away from the wall. “One. Jailbreak time!”

Spike’s smile spread wide. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Oh, I know that,” Dawn replied. “Now let’s get you dressed. Going to wear the black, the black, or the black?”

“Well I’d hate to clash with Anya’s brilliant color scheme.” Spike smirked and swung his legs once more over the side of the bed, clenching his teeth as his knees strained.

“Black it is,” Dawn dove into the box of spare clothes she’d brought over from the crypt.

A few calls, some bald-faced lies, and judicious use of the old army blanket Spike kept for these emergencies later, Dawn and Spike arrived at the party center in only slightly singed style. Guests milled about, chatting, smiling, even though already there was a palatable sense of discord between Anya’s former colleagues and Xander’s family.

“Stop pushin’, Niblet. I can maneuver myself, you know.”

“OH so it’s all ‘give us a hand, love’ in private, but once people are watching we have to be cool self-empowered vamp?”

He leaned back to give her an upside-down smile. “If it makes you feel better, you can fetch us a scotch. It is an open bar, right?”

“Even wedding bartenders don’t hand hard liquor to minors,” Dawn gave him one last gentle shove in the direction of the bar. “I have to go find Anya.”

“Right. ‘Cause you’re the flower girl.”

“Junior Bridesmaid!” she shouted over her shoulder as she hurried off into the bowels of the party center.

Spike tried to keep his smile to a cool level. It’d been a long time since he’d been at a wedding – well, as an invited guest, anyway. He recalled a wedding he’d attended with Angelus back in the latter part of the last century with a fond smile.

His sub-conscience immediately served up a kick: Buffy wouldn’t like that, mate.

Right. No longer fun to think about killing the minister and the groom and running off with the bride as a carry-out snack. But he was sure he’d looked dashing trailing all that tulle and lace as he’d hauled her kicking and screaming to the carriage. And Angelus…

Right. No thinking about it. He scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Occupational hazard of hanging around humans so much – they became people, not happy meals. He couldn’t think of anyone present he particularly wanted to rip apart for the fun of it. Well, Mr. Harris, sure, but Spike suspected that wasn’t a purely vampire impulse. Saint Angel himself would’ve offed the prick after living a month in his basement.

Speak of the ass-wipe… Spike pulled his chair up flush to the bar and rapped on it with one hand. “Hey, how ‘bout some service for the differently-abled down here?”

The senior Mr. Harris sloshed a goodly amount of bourbon out of his highball glass turning to blink at him. “You! You’re the little shit I caught snooping around my garage last spring.”

“And how is the Harris memorial pornography collection?” Spike put on what he always assumed was his most winning smile – the one that got him more often than not socked in the jaw.

“You think you’re smart, don’t you? Because you’re British.”

“Yeh. Arrogance is covered in our national insurance,” Spike couldn’t help smirking. Mr. Harris was a hair’s breadth from the edge, and Spike was just the vamp to push him off.

“You got a green card, smart guy?”

“No,” Spike raised his eyebrows innocently, “But I do have a pink…”

“SPIKE!” Buffy barreled up to the bar like a lineman running interference. “You’re looking very… here. Mr. Harris!” She wrapped her arms around his meaty sleeve, “you’re needed… away from the bar… for… something.”

Spike forgot his nasty comment, gaping in appreciation as his slayer wrangled the drunker Mr. Harris away from his life’s blood – that being the bar, and found a convenient excuse to fob him off on some relatives. Deft as a border collie.

He was still smiling in blank admiration as she stalked back to him, face flushed. “I thought I told you to stay home. Where’s Dawn? I’m going to give those Child Protective Services people something to write reports about!”

“You’re magnificent, love,” he said, reaching for her hand.

She snatched it away. “I’m not anything to you, Spike. If you have to be here, stay in the back and be quiet. Don’t… don’t taunt the guests.”

He pouted and reached for her hand again, though she easily evaded him. “Just feelin’ the love, pet. Weddings are romantic, aren’t they?”

“Half the guests are plotting the grisly murder of the other half, and then there’s demons to watch,” Buffy said, “I don’t have time or energy to spare for you, Spike.”

“I’m not askin’ for any…” he scooted closer to her and she quickly stepped back, maintaining distance and looking anxiously over her shoulder.

“Oh,” Spike said.

Buffy headed into the crowd. Thankfully, she was stopped every five steps by wedding business and Spike found it easy to catch up. “Thought we weren’t doing this anymore,” Spike said.

Buffy’s eyes widened in pure panic. “Doing what? Nothing! We…” she smiled at the wedding photographer. “I think the bride will be ready for preparation photos now-ish.”

“Buffy! Would you stop and think for a bleedin’ second? You’d have acted more friendly to me before we started f…”

Buffy’s hand came down over Spike’s mouth and he found to his considerable panic that she pushed him, chair and all, across the room with one hand on his mouth and one in the middle of his chest. The chair teetered near to over-balancing.

They hit the back wall.

“Careful! My dignity’s hanging by a thread as it is!”

“Spike!” Buffy grabbed both arm-rests and shook the chair to get his attention. “You are not going to blackmail me or sabotage my best friend’s special day. Understand?”

His eyebrows canted. “That’s not…”

“Now I’m going to find Dawn, who should be helping with the flowers, but is now going to have to spend the day making sure YOU stay out of trouble.”

“Hey now, century old here, I think I can…”

But she just pushed off, slamming him into the wall again as she stormed across the room, looking liable to punch whatever fool got in her face next, flower arrangements be damned.

Fortunately, Dawn appeared on her own. “What was that with Hurricane Buffy?”

“I viciously tried to hold her hand in public,” Spike said, sounding tired. He knocked on his arm rest. “Get me out of here, Niblet. Let’s go home.”

“Oh you are so not letting her chase you out.”

“I’m choosin’ to go. She doesn’t want me here an’ I went and made her day harder. Can’t ever keep my damn mouth shut. You know? You stay here. I’ll make my own way.”

“But there’s sun! You’re in a wheelchair, brainiac!”

“I’ll manage.” Spike grimaced out the window at the large parking lot, glittering with car windows and flecks of mica. “Yeah, see? I can follow the porch to that sewer grate there. Find Buffy, make sure she’s okay for me, yeah? And if it comes up in conversation, tell her I’m sorry and I know I fucked up, okay?”

“NOT okay. I went to all the trouble of getting you here, mister. You’re going over to the bar and drinking and embarrassing yourself like a real wedding guest!”

Spike smirked, shook his head, and pushed his chair around the pointing teenager. “Thanks, luv. But I’ve had about enough of that for one day.”

Dawn stubbornly followed him out. She recruited a teen demon party guest to help her pull up the sewer grate for Spike so he wouldn’t have to risk longer in the sun. And then she stood in glaring silence to watch him jump for it, having no choice but to take time putting his legs through the hole as the sun started to make his scalp smoke. Dawn hurried to put the cover over him as he climbed down.

“Now that’s something you don’t see every day,” Dawn’s companion commented, leaning against the building with his hands in his pockets.

“World’s stubbornest vampire,” Dawn grumbled, kicking the iron grate until it laid flush again. “What’s he going to do with two broken legs? Crawl all the way back along the bottom of the sewer? I mean, is that better than staying here?”

“I dunno. I’ve been at parties I’d have rather crawled through raw sewage than be at. Maybe he ran into an ex-girlfriend.”

“If only,” Dawn muttered, taking up an identical pose to the other teenager. “My family is so screwed up.”

“Ha. You should see MY family…”

Willow suddenly appeared in the doorway. “Oh, Dawnie! Thank goodness, there you are. Can you find Xander? We’re running late!”

Dawn and her companion shared wry looks of “What ever would the adults do without us?” and went their separate ways.


	2. Hells Bells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted each chapter of this to be named after, and take place during, an episode of Season Six (hence chapter One being named "Hells Bells".) Alas, I've found I needed a little time between Anya and Xander's wedding and my next chapter, so this chappie takes place between "Hells Bells" and "Normal Again."
> 
> "Normal Again" is actually one of my favorite episodes because it's frickin' dark. I'm hoping my chapter 3 lives up to it.
> 
> So, here it is - it's not perfect (I really don't know what to do about my tendency to tighten and loosen focus on my 3rd person - think I'll talk to my writer's workshop about it.) But what is perfect about it is due to **shapinglight** 's kind beta-reading!

Dawn tried to be useful – fetching tissues for Anya, carrying gifts back to people’s cars (some were left anyway and taken to Anya’s.) There was the reception hall all set up and food for two hundred, but only the five of them to eat it. Even distraught, Anya had enough miserliness to sniff her tears back and demand release from her catering contract. That was a stiff argument to stand helplessly and watch. Poor caterer wringing her hands and saying, “We’ll do what we can… but… the contract… you signed… legally… we’ll…” until she was verbally beaten and left to draw up a new, “emergency” contract.

Buffy had been going on adrenaline for hours before the wedding, and had just crumbled afterward, twisting one of the two hundred little green flowers that wound around the little bubble bottles, not answering Dawn’s questions about what to do next. No, that all fell to the next morning, when Xander had to be found, and wasn’t, and Anya had to be comforted, and wasn’t, and really, why were THEY dealing with the centerpieces and favors, anyway? “Maybe we should just keep everything set-up,” she’d offered, “You know, in case he changes his mind?” Boy had THAT been well-received.

So, yeah, turned out there was a bar mitzvah in the same hall the next morning. Who knew? The party center people had NOT been friendly to her at all with their “That has to be out of here we don’t clear decorations” like she hadn’t been told it a hundred times.

Dawn felt hung-over from all the emotion and drama. (Imagine how Mr. Harris felt! I mean, with the real hang-over?) It was well past noon when she finally got a chance to check on Spike. Only the nagging fear that he’d fallen to a million-toothed monster in the sewers or had burned up crawling to his crypt got her out of her bed and out into the harsh, icky, no-married-Xander-and-Anya world.

***

The sun was high and too-bright and the door to Spike’s crypt groaned loudly on its ancient hinges. “Spike?”

“Not up for company!”

He was in his armchair, scrambling over the side to pick something up. His duster, which he threw across his lap. His naked lap.

Dawn stood completely still in the long trapezoid of sunlight that streamed in from the open door. “You’re naked!” She finally said, unable to make herself say anything else.

“Brilliant deduction, Bit. You could be useful and go get me a change of clothes from downstairs.”

Dawn covered her mouth, looked behind her as if checking to see if Punk’d! had a camera crew there. “Why are you naked?”

“I crawled through three miles of sewer, Bit, not all of which was fitted with convenient walkways. Why the hell do you THINK I’m naked?”

Dawn tried to keep her eyes on his scowling face, really she did, his dark eyebrows all canted and his cute eyes… but it was like an eye-magnet was hidden in his crotch – she couldn’t NOT look down.

His knees were bumpy and had bits of denim fuzz stuck to them.

“Fine,” she tore herself away and stomped every step down the little ladder and to the chest where Spike kept his clothes. Grabbing jeans and a t and her favorite of his red shirts, she turned and frowned at the iron-rung ladder. No wonder he hadn’t come down himself. It was a STUPID ladder, too wide in the rungs and too slippery besides. She balled Spike’s clothes up and tucked them under her arm for the climb up.

“Stupid, melodramatic vampire!” She threw the clothes at the back of his head, refusing to come close enough to be caught by the crotch-magnet again. “Do you know how worried I was?”

He ducked his head under the impact of cloth and smirked up at her over the chair-back. “Touched, I am. Got you all-fired protective.”

“What kind of stubborn do you have to be to crawl three miles through sewage with two broken legs?”

He nodded apologetically. “My kind of stubborn.” He stretched his long bare arm to pluck the clothing up from the floor. Shifted in place, trying to get dressed. She heard the denim sliding over his legs.

“I know you guys are doing it.”

Spike froze mid-wriggle. “What’s that, pidge?”

Dawn paced between the two stone sarcophaguses. (Sarcophagi?) “You’re doing it. You and Buffy. GOD it’s not rocket science. I don’t know why you’re being all secret about it. Buffy and you are doing it and for some reason that makes you act like complete idiots around each other and you can’t be in public together even long enough to be there when things fall apart!”

“A gentleman never tells,” he said, with an air of authority that would have been funny, any other day of the week.

“I don’t believe in gentlemen anymore,” Dawn said. “Who’s supposed to be a gentleman if Xander isn’t?”

“What’re you talkin’ about? What’s happened?”

Dawn sniffled and wiped her running nose on the the back of her hand. How gross was it that your nose always ran when you cried? “Are you still naked?”

He shifted around, head disappearing as he hunched over. There was a grunt and then a zipper. “All covered, Bit. Come tell old Spike all your troubles.”

He held out an arm to her, guiding her to his lap. Dawn demurred for the chair arm, though, remembering the complaints last time she’d sat on the injured vampire’s legs.

She drew her knee up next to her and told him everything. Everything.

“…centerpieces. Totally unstackable. Anya had these dried flower arrangements with these candles in the center all wrapped in sticks. It was supposed to be kind of woodsy, I guess. But Buffy burst into tears when the first box we packed fell apart and Anya was screaming about the price of dried flowers and I just wanted to die.”

Spike rubbed circles on her back. “What the fuck got into Harris to treat his girl like that? I always knew he was an idiot, but THIS is beyond special-ed. You rent a tux, you show up, anyone asks you a question you answer ‘I do’. How hard is that?”

Dawn pushed at his shoulder. “It can’t be all Xander’s fault.”

“Yeah? Explain that one to me, Bit. Because from my point of view, blame seems pretty clear-cut.”

“I don’t know. I just… God I’m so angry at him, but I still love Xander. He… it shouldn’t be possible for him to have done this. Not MY Xander.”

Spike leaned his head back, surveying her. “Why do all the pretty birds fall for assholes?”

“Oh, you are SO not one to talk.” Dawn rubbed her cheek, smearing dried and fresh tears together. She nudged his leg with her foot. “Bet you ruined you knees all over again, didn’t you? Bet you’re not going to walk for a month because you just couldn’t be in the same room with us. Stupid vampire.”

“Sorry I wasn’t there. ‘S what you’re really sayin’. I should have stayed. Shoulda been there for you an’ Buffy.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Dawn said, quietly, but the way she slid off the chair arm and into his lap said different. They sat for a while, staring at the blank television screen.

“Come on, Bite-size,” Spike patted her rear. “Can’t sit here all day like a couple of sad saps.”

“Have you been eating?”

He stared at her in such surprise that she laughed. “Do you have blood to eat?”

“In the fridge,” he jerked his head back toward it.

Dawn hopped lightly to her feet and he heard the soft pop of the mini-fridge opening. “Ew! And I thought OUR fridge was disgusting!”

“What do you expect? I’m a creature of the night, not Donna Bloody Reed!”

She held it out on two fingertips, the plastic lid popping off, sagging, bringing that fuzzy refrigerator-deli smell into the air. Spike grabbed it from her. “You’re gonna spill it.”

“It’s gross. At least if you were eating people it would be neat.”

“Right,” he said with one of his quiet, knowing smiles.

“UGH. I can’t watch you drink that. It smells!” She strode out the crypt door.

He didn’t expect her to come back swinging a switch. “What the hell is that?”

“A remote.” She resumed her seat on the chair arm and tried several times before successfully poking the television’s on button. Her smile was wide and bright. “Since you’re stuck in your chair.” She held it out to him like a scepter.

“You’re quite the angel of mercy, aren’t you, Bit?”

“Well forgive me if I spend five minutes taking care of my nearly-dead friend.”

“Hey! ‘M all-dead.”

She pressed the stick into his hands and frowned at him seriously. “Are you going to get better? I mean, your knees…”

“They’re halfway there, love. No worries. I spent most of this morning getting all the bits lined up right. ’S rather like tryin’ to arrange scrabble tiles in milk-flavored jello,” he said.

“Eeew. And thank you for THAT mental image.”

They settled down then to practice using the stick to change channels, and then to some impromptu stick sword-fighting.

When the news came on, he said, “Niblet, best get out of here before it gets dark.”

Their eyes met in a silent contest of wills. She looked away first, and stood with an exaggerated sigh. “Yeah, sure, get rid of your faithful minion. You vampires are all the same,” she stuck her tongue out at him.

“Just get home before you’re eaten!” He threw the empty plastic blood container after her back as she giggled out the door.

Buffy arrived in the wee hours, after a few naps and a fruitless search for anything good on. He was poking the ‘next channel’ button relentlessly with his stick when she entered the crypt.

Static fuzz. Advert. Static fuzz. Static fuzz. Advert. He glanced up at her and jabbed the off button. He was getting good with the pokey stick. He twirled it in his hand and set it beside him. She was still standing in the doorway, staring at him, like she was trying to figure something out.

“Just in the neighborhood?” he asked.

She shook her head. “New demon. Are you all better?”

“Yeah. Armchair miracle cure.” Her shoulders sagged in relief. He smirked. “No! Slayer, have you gone daft?”

She laughed, then, a little, and unknowingly assumed Dawn’s vacated spot on the chair-arm. “Well, my job sucks, my sister was missing all day, and my friends’ lives are all falling apart. ‘Daft’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”

Spike winced. “Dawn came here. Checked up on me. Didn’t know she hadn’t told anyone.”

Buffy turned fully toward him. “And you never asked. Of course you wouldn’t think to ask. I thought…”

“She just came to check up on me, yeah? Didn’t mean to keep her long. She didn’t act like she was in a hurry or expected somewhere.”

Buffy grimaced. “You’re a bad influence on her.”

He reached up to stroke her arm with the back of one finger. “Nah. Save up all my bad influencing for you.”

She smacked his hand away. She looked at him full of accusation.

“What?” he asked.

She slipped into his lap and grabbed two fistfuls of his hair.

“Hey,” he pulled back, hands on her shoulders, and fought a little with her to maintain the distance. “You have something to say, say it. You don’t get to…”

“Spike!” He knew exactly what she meant in one word, in the pretty white crinkles of her brow. Don’t make me talk about my feelings. Don’t make me have to think or plan or care.

Not that she’d say that. He let go to brush her hair back from her forehead. “Poor love. Not even old Spike’s going easy on you.”

She used the let up of pressure to lean forward and kiss him, a hard, angry kiss that pulled lips and made them feel thin between teeth.

When she broke for air, he said, “Pet, don’t want us bein’ together to always be about sex.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right. Because we’ve been having so much lately.”

There was a pause while he didn’t mention the other night, when he’d not been half as well and told her he wasn’t ready but gave in because otherwise she’d start up the bite conversation again and he didn’t want to go there and he’d screwed up his right knee worse than it was because when you’re screwing you don’t think or notice where your damn knee is.

Maybe that’s why they called it screwing. “Fine,” he said, “I’m worried about my chair.”

“Your chair?”

“I’m still convalescing here! It’s my only chair!”

Buffy was genuinely smiling now. She shifted her weight in his lap and her shoulders adjusted in a little pre-pounce wiggle. “We’re not going to wreck your chair.”

“That a promise?”

She tipped her head back. “I can be gentle. I can be extreme gentle girl.”

Spike couldn’t help his smile. He ran his hands up her flanks, rumpling the soft cotton of her blouse. “Show me, love. Show me Miss Gentle Buffy.”

Her first kiss was almost a sob, and she rubbed a tear-wet cheek against his. They talk, then, with motion. They always communicate better without words. “I’ve lost my faith in happiness” her kisses said, and he drew his lips against hers to say “There’s no need for faith. Happiness is still there, somewhere, where we can't see it.”

He doesn’t put his foot in it when he lets his hands speak for him. They run gently over every part of her, fingers fluttering a steady “it’s all right. It’s all right. It will be all right.”

When she finally believed him, her hands turned rough. She grabbed and pulled and groaned. Clothes were hastily opened, pushed aside. The poor lounger groaned in its wooden joints. Powdered bits of foam cushion rained onto the floor. Fabric shook.

Groaning became cracking and with a thunderclap sound they dropped two feet, wood and fabric spreading around them.

They wrecked the chair.


	3. Normal Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Friday night I was thinking porny thoughts and came up with an end to the chapter. I realized: when in doubt, be meaner to the Spike!
> 
> Um... er... well, I hope you like it.

“Oh god, I’m… I didn’t mean that to happen.” Buffy tried to pick him up from the tangle of wood and fabric that had been an easy chair.

He slapped her away. “’M not an invalid!” His hand then immediately dropped to check on his knee, and he grimaced, knowing without looking that she was rolling her eyes.

“I can carry you to the bed.”

He rolled onto his ass and scooted back to lean against the wall. “Let me have a scrap of dignity.” His right knee flexed a little, accidentally but painlessly, and he tentatively flexed it again.

“I… I know it’s my fault. You said we shouldn’t… again… and I really… I mean… we keep doing this. I keep doing this, and it has to stop.”

“Why did I have to fall for a girl with a conscience? All your guilt is about to explode my head. I swear I could kill you when you look at me like that.” He glanced around, noted the location of his pants and started crawling toward them.

Buffy grabbed his jeans and had them in his hand in an instant. She darted around the room like a bird, picking up all their hastily-discarded clothing. “It’s hard, you know? Slayer strength should come with training wheels or a dial-back or…”

Spike groaned through clenched teeth. “Slayer I can’t take it. Climb down off that cross and let’s just get sorted before I pop you one. You’re makin’ me miss Harmony.”

She crouched in the remains of the chair, pulling her socks back on. “I’m trying to apologize. But not for feeling guilty. Guilt is good. It’s… you can’t be a good person and not feel guilt.”

He knocked his head against the wall. “We’re back to that already. Changed my mind. Feel guilty. Pamper the guilt away, please.”

“Damn it, Spike.” She threw his shirt at his bare chest. “You know why this happened.”

She sat disconsolately next to him while he started to wriggle into his clothes. “Do I, now?”

“You don’t… since it happened. You always…”

“Slayer.” He paused in pulling on his shirt to give this warning, and kept his eyes on her steadily as he shrugged into the sleeves.

His eyes could always silence her. She had to blink and turn away to talk again. “You,” she said, and “You… you!” She clenched her fists. Eyes closed. “You were raped.”

He sighed heavily. “Fine now; not angry about the chair. I’ll get a new one at the dump tomorrow. Go home, Slayer.”

Her eyes were red-rimmed. “This isn’t just about me feeling guilty. It’s about how you don’t start… things… anymore and if I don’t then there’s something broken that will stay broken and maybe I knew it would wreck the chair but I had to do something because you wouldn’t.” Buffy hiccupped, a dry little sound, and looked to see if he understood.

His expression was studiously blank. “If all a soul does is make you unreasonable, I’m glad I don’t have one.”

Her face hardened and her fist punched his shoulder to the wall with the quick precision of a staple-gun. She scrambled to her feet and ran out the door.

“There you go again,” he said, “Virtue fluttering.”

***

Dawn came by the next day to find him walking up and down the sarcophagus, one hand inching along the stone to steady himself and a serious expression on his face.

“Omigawd you’re walking!” She barreled into him and nearly knocked him down.

“Great, great! Now I bloody well can’t again!” He joked and rubbed her back while she squeezed him with all her little-girl strength.

She helped him clean up the bits and parts of the chair – didn’t even press too hard for the story of its demise after Spike shrugged it off as “one of those home break-in problems.”

Though it was well past the proper time for the Bit to be out, at dusk they went together to the dump and searched without success for a good lounge chair. Then he saw Niblet delivered to her door with a reprimand not to worry her sister that she nodded at in a way that assured Spike she was going to ignore it completely.

Spike came home to find the fridge completely empty, even the box of crackers on top holding nothing but a wax-paper wrapper and some crumbs.

Lou’s Buy-Rite was on the same disheveled block as Willy’s and Spike didn’t like going there, but, well, it was two in the morning and it was the only one store open.

The reason he hated the place was Lou, the proprietor. He had a trapezoid of a head, buzz-cut on top and sagging jowls underneath, the thick neck and flabby bulk of a high school athlete who never stopped eating like he was 18. His skin was always flushed red, looking abraded on his cheeks. He breathed heavy. He snorted and coughed a lot. And he always smelled like sour cum, sweat and arousal. And he watched Spike move around his store like a cat watching a fish tank.

Spike wasn’t unused to that sort of attention, but usually he could flash a little fang and the git would never bother him again. Lou, apparently, had been in Sunnydale too long. He just laughed the first time Spike vamped at him. Then again, there were probably reasons he felt safe keeping his store open late at night. Lou even stocked pint-buckets of blood at the bottom of the cooler that held milk and beer.

Spike avoided looking at the man, tried to pretend he didn’t hear his gasps and grunts. That wet sound of phlegm rattling deep in the esophagus – Christ man, spit it out already! He got a pint of blood and a bottle of Jack from the beverage cooler. “Pack of Marlborough,” he said, setting his groceries on the counter.

Lou got a soft-pack out of the dispenser and tossed it on the counter. But when Spike reached for the cigarettes, he set his fat, sausage-fingered hand over his. “These could be free, you know,” Lou said.

“Yeah? I could swipe ‘em!” Spike pulled his hand back and vigorously scrubbed it against his thigh. Lou’s hand was sweaty – big creepy surprise.

“I know what you do,” Lou said.

“What I do is kill ignorant pricks who keep me from my fags.” Spike threw a few crumpled bills down. One wafted onto the shopkeeper’s fat hand, still protectively over the soft-pack.

“Don’t be like that. A handsome fellow like you shouldn’t have to buy his own smokes.”

“Sure, mate. You want a bite, that it? With your blood pressure you’ll be geyserin’ all over the floor the minute a fang grazed you.”

Lou laughed his wet, rattling laugh, ending it with a cough and a spit of phlegm into the waste-bin behind the counter. “Wasn’t talking about biting, Spike.”

“Know what? Keep the bloody fags.” Spike grabbed his blood and booze and stormed into the night with a bottle in each fist.

He heard someone calling his name as he entered the iron gates of Restfield Cemetery, but he didn’t slow his steps or turn to see, intent on getting back to his crypt where planned on draining both bottles in quick succession.

“Spike!” Buffy jogged into his path, holding a hand out toward him. “Didn’t you hear me?”

He stopped, nostrils flaring. “Busy, Slayer. Not in the mood to reenact the latest ‘Lifetime’ movie, aright?”

She folded her arms tightly, scowling. “I had to find out you were up and around from Dawn.”

“Wasn’t aware I had to report my actions to you.” He tucked the whiskey under his arm and shifted his weight onto one hip.

Buffy’s mouth tightened into a hard line, but then she shook her head, features relaxing just a little. “Forget it. Spike… after what happened yesterday…” She took a step closer. “We both said things we really shouldn’t have. Can’t we just…?”

“Spike, I should have know you'd be tagging along.” Xander trotted up the path, Willow close behind him.

Buffy jumped back. “Hey Guys! I ahh, I found Spike, and was ahh... trying to figure out what kind of dangerous contraband he had.”

“Tell you what, Slayer, let me get out of your way, stop bothering you.” Spike shouldered past Buffy with his head down.

“Yeah,” Xander said, “maybe you should do that Spike. Just, run along.”

Buffy bit her lower lip. “Xan…”

Spike turned on his heel, stalking back with menace. “I guess you know all about that, don't you? The King of the Big Exit. Heard it brought the house down.”

“I don't need this crap from you.”

Spike got right into Xander’s face. “Right, let's not listen to Spike. Might get a bit of truth on you.”

Willow held her hands out. “Okay, okay! Calm, now. Let's turn around and release this, very manly thing, the other way.”

“I forgot, Willie-wanna-bite can't hurt me. Time to pick a fight, I guess.”

“Xander!”

“More than happy to beat you right through the pain you pathetic poof!”

Buffy held a hand up, weakly. “Guys! guys don't...”

She fell, face-first. The whiskey bottle clanked against a tombstone and the cold pigs blood oozed into the grass as Spike dove to catch her.

“Buffy!” Willow peered anxiously into her friend’s face. Buffy’s eyelids fluttered.

“Let’s get her in to my crypt,” Spike said, starting to carry her.

“Wait, stop,” Xander stepped in front of Spike. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Spike scowled. “Think I’m gettin’ her to the nearest shelter, git.”

As suddenly as she had fainted, Buffy awoke again with a soft cry, her hands suddenly slapping against Spike’s chest as though trying to drive him off. Confused, Spike let her slip from his arms.

Xander grabbed Buffy’s shoulders. “Spike! Just… go. She’s _our_ friend, we’ll take care of her.”

“I’m okay,” Buffy murmured, eyes not quite focusing.

Willow ducked under one of Buffy’s arms, gently dragging her from Spike’s grasp. “It’s okay. Xander, help me get her home.”

Xander shot one last nasty glare at Spike as he took a position opposite Willow supporting Buffy.

Spike found himself alone on an anonymous grave, smelling pig’s blood and dew. He picked up his whiskey bottle and finished his short walk home.

He sat down on the sarcophagus and twisted the cap off his bottle. “Time for part seven of our ongoing experiment: can vampires subsist on alcohol alone?”

He raised the bottle to his lips, but paused, looking at the slightly ajar door to his crypt. Pointedly he turned away and took a long, calming swig.

Then he got up and shoved the door flush. For esthetics, he told himself, and jammed the ancient, broken lock.

He sat down again and just sighed, staring at the bottle in his hands.

***

“Are you all right?” Spike settled into the chair by the bedside with the cup of antidote Xander had (rather rudely) handed him. He tried to get Buffy to take it.

She flinched from his touch. “Leave me alone. You aren’t a part of my life.”

He bit his lip. “Fine then. Hope you don’t think this antidote is going to rid you of that nasty martyrdom.” He shoved the cup at her until she grudgingly took it.

“I should have known,” she said. “You. That’s the worst of all. Make an enemy: handsome, evil yet romantic, then make him such a wuss he’ll do anything I want. A real vampire wouldn’t be so pathetic, and I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t.”

He jumped up. “Nothing’s good enough for you!” He turned and walked right into a narrow band of sunlight that escaped the tightly drawn blinds. He shook his exposed hand and paced back toward the bed. “I been trying, yeah? Trying to be a good man, to go against my very nature. I ask myself, ‘what would Buffy do? What would she like’ and nine times out of ten, when it isn’t about ME, that’s the moral right. I get it. I’m not stupid. You want to call it weak when I’m killing myself for you?”

“Of course, Spike. The evil vampire who only wants to be loved,” she said with a patronizing pout. “It makes so much sense that your moping would make me sleep with you when I hate you.”

“Never mind. Drink your bloody potion and go back to being miserable. It’s what you’re good at.” Spike turned to leave.

He was stopped by a hard strike to the back of his skull. He turned, staring in surprise at Buffy standing next to him, her fists clasped together.

“Quickest way to subdue an opponent. Concussion.” She slammed both fists again into the back of his head, full slayer strength cracking his forehead against the floor with a sound like stone.

Spike collapsed in a tangled heap. Buffy stood over him. “You are _so_ a delusion,” she said, and stepped over him.

Spike awoke to the sound of muffled cries. Dawn. Somewhere down below him, crying for help. “Please no, I’ll be good…”

His head felt split open. He clung to the door-frame he was lying in and pulled himself to his feet. “Buffy?” The room behind him was empty. The cup of antidote poured out on the floor.

“Buggering Hell.” He groaned and rushed down the hall, down the stairs, following the remembered sounds of Dawn’s voice, and the occasional thud, now, in the basement.

Buffy was unchaining the Glargabullgashmanick. Spike blinked, wondering briefly if the concussion was affecting his vision. Willow rolled on the floor, looking up at him over a mouth sealed in duct-tape. “Slayer! What are you doing?”

Buffy turned to face him, yanking the last chain free from the demon. “I’ll be better when you’re gone. Traps for my mind, drawing me back in to the delusion.” She grabbed the edge of the stair rail and yanked a chunk of wood off.

“Slayer, this isn’t you.” He held up both hands. She lunged at him and he dodged, stumbling off the last step of the stairs. “You’re hallucinating or something. Come on, you…” Another tussle, he nearly tripped over the prone body of Xander. “Dawn! You wouldn’t hurt Dawn! You bleedin’ died for her!”

The demon roared, lumbering toward Willow. There was no missing the anger rolling off the creature. It had been chained and poked and prodded by these unconscious, defenseless people.

Spike ducked under Buffy’s fist, took a kick in the side in passing as he lunged to get between the beast and Willow. “Bloody hell. Slayer! Would you look what you’re making me do?” He blocked a blow from the demon that hit his forearm like a hatchet.

The basement door swung open. Tara appeared, gasping. Spike only had time to see a slight glow coming from her hands. “Thank god! Witch, do your stuff!”

But then Buffy was on him, grabbing him from behind, throwing him to the floor. He rolled, she kicked, she fell on him, punching. He tried to grab the stake from her hand and got the back end of it in the nose.

Whatever Glinda was doing, he couldn’t see, he could only hope it was containing the beast. Buffy was on his stomach, stake raised high. He closed his eyes and let his arms fall to his sides.

He always knew she would kill him.

But it was the side of the stake that struck his chest, flat and painless, her hand fever-hot around it. “I can’t.”

Her eyes were glistening with tears. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. Good-bye.”

He braced himself for the end, assuming the farewell was for him. But she just stood up, leaving the stake behind. She turned to the demon Tara was holding at bay and with all the grace and speed he admired dispatched it.

He was so relieved he just lay there until Buffy, after freeing Willow, Dawn, and Xander – with apologies to all – came and held a hand out to help him up.

“You couldn’t kill me,” he said.

She grimaced. “Don’t read too much into that.”

Dawn barreled into his side, squeezing right on top of where Buffy had kicked him. “Omigawd you saved my life!”

“You’re welcome,” Tara said, with quiet amusement, from over where she was helping Xander to his feet. “Come on, we have to get more antidote. Spike? Take Buffy upstairs and watch her.”

“You couldn’t kill me,” he repeated, grinning. “An’ the witch wants me to watch over you. Nicest compliments I’ve ever gotten.” He carefully extracted himself from Niblet’s crushing embrace and took Buffy’s arm. She pulled away slightly, when she thought he was going to kiss her in front of everyone, but then she relaxed, and let him draw her up the stairs.


	4. The beginning of Entropy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pretty much porn. Spuffy. Anal. Rimming. Gratuitous praising of fluids.
> 
> But remember where they are before this, and all the nasty crap that's been going down in Spike's life since my little AU started, or the ending might confuse.

The alarm-clock radio clicked on, half-way through some jittery 50’s tune, all thrumming base and, she was sure, long-limbed boys dancing like loons. “Shame, shame, shame on you Miss Roxy! Shame on what you done!”

“Don’t want to get out of bed,” Buffy moaned. Actually, she didn’t want to open her eyes, much less acknowledge the day had started. She could still taste the vile demon-poison antidote on the back of her tongue. She rolled over and felt… male chest. Hard bare male chest under her hands and that should NOT have been there in her bed. She opened her eyes.

“There she is,” Spike said. He stroked the side of her face. “Gave us quite a scare.”

Buffy checked her own state of dress – in pajamas. She scooted away from him. “Where is everyone? Did anyone see you come in here? We have to… I know, I’ll go first, check who’s where, then we sneak you downstairs and…”

“There’s an easier way, pet,” Spike chided, “You could just tell them about us.”

She rolled onto her back. “Don’t start that again.”

“Why not? You tried to kill them, love, and they forgave you! Not one angry word. You think a little tumble with me is going to phase them?”

“Spike!’ Buffy scrambled out of bed. “I’m not ready. I can’t do this, not today. We have to get you out of here before anyone notices.”

He rolled his shoulders and laid back. “Been here all night, kitten. Watching over you while the antidote did its work. Like a good friend.” He smirked at her anxious expression. “And the house is empty. Dawn left little over an hour ago for school. Witches were out before that.”

He tried not to feel too smug that her anxiety vanished almost instantly. She sighed and crawled back into bed. “Good. Sleep now. Thinky decision-making later.”

“That’s my girl.” He held out his arm and let her snuggle under it.

“Mmmm” she said, her lips pressing and releasing against his chest in what could be called a series of sleepy kisses, but he wouldn’t go alerting HER of that.

“My hero,” he said, stroking her hair back from her face. He kissed the smooth, soft patch of skin between the corner of her eye and her hairline. “You couldn’t kill me.”

She thumped him gently on the chest. “Will you stop teasing me about that?”

“Can’t help it, love. See, there you were, all in the grips of that madness, stake raised high and me sure I was done for… and you didn’t. You tore yourself away from madness, away from what you thought was reality, to save me.” He kissed above her eyebrow. “Takes strength.” He kissed between her brows. “Power.” He kissed the center of her forehead. “Such will. My heroic love.” He trailed kisses across her scalp.

She wriggled, pushing him back. “Spike… I…”

He let her adjust their positions, watching patiently, attentively as she straddled his legs and looked down at him with confusion.

“Shush,” he said, after a while – long enough for the commercial break on the oldies station to have ended and the Boxtops to start singing about letters. He ran his hands over the soft flannel of her pajamas. “Don’t need to say anything, yeah?”

Relief washed over her face and she fell into kissing him.

His hands felt nice, smoothing the soft flannel against her skin in big passes, gripping her bottom with that possessive squeeze.

The flannel jimmies started to feel a bit too hot. She didn’t want to stop kissing though. She rocked their lips together, taking little gasps of breath between presses, and started wriggling out of her top.

Without a single shift in his lips’ attentions, Spike helped her. He was a wiz at unbuttoning. She wondered with part of her mind that was still working if he could unbutton faster than she could unzip. She reached for his waist to see, but found that, as usual, he was sleeping in the nude.

Which wasn’t such a bad thing, either, as it gave her hands something very nice to touch and hold and stroke while he got even more efficient at divesting her of her now WAY TOO HOT pajamas. Sweat made flannel rough, and she sighed with pleasure when it was removed and her skin could cool against the air of the room – and the very nice hands rubbing sweat into her hips.

He kissed up, tilting her head with the power of his lips, which then went walking over her chin, her jaw line, her throat. He could push her whole body over with the right sort of kiss. She felt weightless in his hands, thoughtless, free.

They rolled over, one beautiful naked beast now made up of lips and hands and touch.

She felt bold and new. “I want to do something different.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Well now, not much left for us to do.” His hand is making lazy circles around her vagina, brushing lightly over the center now and again, flicking in to pick up moisture.

He smirked and kissed his way down to her breasts. “These are so lovely. You know that, right? Two perfect little cones.”

“Don’t call my breasts little while we’re having sex.”

He licked across both nipples and then settled his chin on her sternum. “Called ‘em perfect, didn’t I? More’n a mouthful’s wasted.”

“Spike!” She groaned.

They fight, just a little, her strength against his, trying to move him while he teases her with stillness. But he always gives in – always exactly when she’s about to explode and put her full strength behind it.

She never has to force him to do anything.

He lavished attention on her breasts while his hand moved again, cupping her sex, dividing the labia and smoothing them aside. He trailed over her clit again and again until she couldn’t take it anymore and at the same time wanted more.

A sudden idea popped into her head. “I want you to go… you know.”

He looked up from her navel. “What’s that, princess?”

She blushed and covered her eyes.

He chuckled, forefinger now making its own little circles of her clit, pushing the hood back –just the good side of too soon, the sensation intense. She grabbed his wrist and held him still. He kissed and licked down her stomach until his mouth was poised over his thumb and he breathed, deliberately, on her exposed clit.

“Dirty teasing vampire!”

He chuckled with his lips on her, too amused for a while to do more than snake his tongue out for a quick flick, exactly like he did when he gave her _that_ look.

She writhed under his attentions, hands finding themselves as always trapped in the slightly sticky, over-gelled strands of his hair. It was kind of nice, though, she could really hold on to him, gelled-together hair looping over her fingers.

He was playing with her clit like it was his own personal toy, licking and tugging at it. She pushed down on his head, gently at first then harder. He looked up. “Something you want?”

God he looked filthy between her thighs, the lower half of his face glistening. She groaned and pushed again.

“You know you get what you want a lot faster if you TELL me,” he said, eyebrow arched oh so wryly. He lowered his chin and gave her a long slow lick while maintaining eye contact. “You got to work on your communication skills pet.”

“Back,” she growled.

“Oh! Is _that_ what you meant by ‘something different’?” He tickled her with the tip of his tongue. “Well, I dunno…”

“Spike!”

He chuckled and kissed her right thigh noisily. “Right. That there was practically a state-of-the-union, coming from you.”

He resumed his task, licking slow and long, dipping deep between her folds and dragging further back, past that point that always felt good when he licked it, where his tongue slipped over a lip of skin into the deepest part of her, and he took his time giving that little lip attention and then he was…

Buffy slammed a fist into the bedspread.

Spike chuckled again, very smug. He let his tongue run lightly over the corrugated skin around her anus, watching her whole body twitch with the ticklish pleasure. He let the folds guide him in, pressed at the center of that rosette and watched her ball up a handful of bedspread and punch the mattress again. They both bounced from the impact. “Careful, pet, don’t want to break your nice bed.”

She groaned. “Evil! You’re evil evil evil!”

He tapped patiently until the sphincter relaxed, then gave her her first feel of a tongue inside her back entrance. The tight muscle giving way to smooth, hot depths. Strange how the heat changed the flavor, bitter and hot as coffee.

She lifted off the bed completely.

“That’s it!” Buffy pushed him back with one foot on his chest.

“Wot?” He blinked at her in innocence.

She pushed at him with her foot, just once, to let him know she meant business and could, if she wanted to, send him through the wall, then she turned and got onto her hands and knees.

He groaned. “Come on, love, we can do everything you want face-to-face.”

She smacked the coverlet with the top of her foot. “And the bed gets wrecked. Don’t make me come back there.”

Spike rolled his eyes extravagantly – not that she was getting the benefit of that singularly eloquent expression. He always felt a little… submissive in this position. She was turned away from him, locked in her own world while he serviced her. She got her pleasure and denied him one of his: the beautiful reactions on her face. He ran his hands over her hips, and dipped one down between her legs. Her lips were parted and swollen now, dripping. He licked her lower back and cupped his hand, letting the heel rub into her. “Oh, love, your sweet cunny juice. You know how much I love this stuff?”

She pushed her ass insistently toward him. “Less talk.”

“Oh but how can I not?” He drew his hand back, glistening. He rubbed her moisture into her crack, massaging her ass and wriggling a finger in. She tensed slightly at that first, rigid intrusion. He heard her breath catch and her heart speed. “There, that’s hardly nothing, just a tiny fingertip…”

“Oh my god it hurts!”

“Yeah, because you’re trying to separate my fingertip from my hand with your ass cheeks, love. They aren’t made for that.” He rubbed her lower back in circles. “Relax. Let it spread out of you, yeah? Yeah. Like that. Shh…”

“I don’t know if I still want to do this.”

“Plenty of time to stop. Just relax, yeah? Let me show you a few things, get you to decide yourself if you want more. There we are. God you’re beautiful. Let’s get more slick.” He let his fingertip slip straight from her ass to her vulva and back. It slid in easily this time, to the first knuckle. He wriggled it. She wasn’t tensing. “How’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’ll know when you know,” he said, as if that answered everything, and went back to stroking her with his other hand, mapping the walls of her vagina, sweeping around her clit and back again. “Look at all this gorgeous stuff. Love makin’ it come out of you, love. Could milk you all day.”

“You’re a pig, Spike.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled proudly. He spread his fingers, watched the film cling and break between them, dropping into droplets, which he smeared over her passage, working in a second finger. “Best slick ever made. Smells sweet. Tastes…” he brought his fingers to his lips and licked them with a deep groan of satisfaction. “Bloody marvelous. Peaches and cream you are, love. All the fucking way inside. Could live off of nothing but this. Could bathe in it.”

She groaned, pushing back now. The fingers inside her didn’t feel like, well, anything, really, no more sensation than a finger between her lips, maybe, or lying on her thigh, but when she pushed back the rest of his hand against the entrance felt nice, necessary, and she wanted more of that.

He was working hard now, one hand front and one behind, making squelching noises. “Now, was there something you wanted, pet?”

“Spike! I will kill you so slowly you’ll be able to count the dust motes.”

He laughed. “Oh how you do flatter a bloke. Well, now you’re mighty slicked up, aren’t you? My how lovely you opened up for me. But my prick still needs some slick. However will it get some?”

She banged the head-board into the wall pushing back at him with all her might. “Dead man,” was all she could voice of the threat.

He slipped his cock between his own fingers into her pussy. As always it felt like coming home. A strange relaxation took over her as she felt her body close around him. He kept one hand at her clit, even though… god she loved this position… it wasn’t necessary, he always hit something vital and hard inside her from this angle, something that made her urgent and angry and thrilled all at once.

And now, his fingers inside her and on her, pressing her clit into his cock in front and pressing that.. that other amazing thing into him from behind. She felt the universe collapse into her and explode outward again.

“That’s it, pet, come for me… so beautiful when you come. So lovely. Feel all that you spend for me. I love it.” His hand was stroking up and down where his cock disappeared into her, collecting fluid.

His three fingers twisted and flattened together, spreading her. She gasped at the sudden, wide stretch. Did she feel cold air deep inside her, or was that psychosomatic?

Then his cock-head was nudging against his fingers, like an eager puppy nosing.

She tensed up all anew, causing a sudden cold prickle all along her lower back.

“Hush, sh.. easy love. We can stop. It’s not a bigger deal than that, yeah?” His right hand went back to rubbing gently, back and forth over her sex, just a light tease on over-sensitized flesh while his right withdrew from her back package and, wet though it was, rubbed her lower back in slow circles. “We can stop here.”

She blew hair out of her face and looked over her shoulder at him. His face was concerned, anxious. “Are you nuts?”

He blinked. “Right. All right. Full speed ahead.” He lowered and kissed her cheeks.

He started over with one finger. It wasn’t even an issue this time.

I can do this, Buffy told herself. She rested her head on her wrists and made herself breathe evenly.

Two fingers now. “Try bearing down. You know… like… bear down,” he said, stroking, teasing, knuckling her vagina and flicking touches up and down over her ass, poking in and out, getting her used to that, she supposed, though there was already a slight feeling of friction, of burn, a tug and drag.

He brought his left hand back and everything was wet again, sliding easy, wonderful. She felt empty. She pressed back. “Come on.”

“Oh no, we are taking this slow, pet. After that last time? I barely touched you.”

She groaned. “Changed my mind. Fine now. Go! Do it!”

The cockhead was soft, round, and way, way bigger than she remembered, fingers slipping out as it nudged in, just an inch, stopping.

“Infuriating vampire!”

“Sh… shush, love. How’s that feel?”

“Huge,” she said, truthfully, looking back to see if he was going to be insufferable over this.

But he was just watching her. His thumbs made little circles on her ass cheeks. “Goin’ in a little further now.” He pressed forward, slowly, inch by inch, pausing to check her reaction, until at last at long long last she felt his pelvis against her, his balls hanging pleasantly against her. She arched her back, rubbing up.

“You feel so much bigger.”

“Smaller hole, is all. Ready for more?”

“Move or I’ll kill you.”

He chuckled. “Take that as a ‘yes’.” He pulled ever so slightly out and then back in. Then a little further, a little further. Buffy closed her eyes and concentrated on the sensation, trying to analyze it. There wasn’t any pain, but neither was it thrilling her. It wasn’t like the pleasure when he slammed into her like usual. Instead it was just… odd.

He picked up the pace, a little faster, a little faster, and a wall of sensation seemed to build with friction until some line was crossed and pleasure thrummed all the way through her body from that one point. She picked her head up. “Oh. Oh. That. Don’t stop doing. That.”

He was moving quickly now, his balls swinging between her legs to slap her vulva, which was a wonderful feeling in itself. His left hand returned to her clit, rubbing in time to his thrusts. It was a brighter pleasure – white and yellow compared to the red and orange pulsing through her from behind. She reached over his hand, tucking her shoulders down until she was able to grab his balls and hold them, rub them against her perineum. He seized up against her. “Fuck. Buffy!”

A tiny fraction of rational thought left in her pleasure-drugged mind reminded her that ‘boy need move for pleasure keep happening’, so she let him go. He rewarded her with harder thrusts, pressing into the edge of pain.

The orgasm was even more intense than before – it ripped through her and left nothing in its wake. She didn’t notice him cumming, but he must have, because his penis was soft against her thigh while he lay beside her, holding her, his lips pressed to her nape in a long, grateful kiss.

They lay silent and entwined for a while, cooling and drying. She nabbed the bedsheet from its crumpled lair at the foot of the bed and brought it over her now-cold legs.

“That’s another fine quality of female sexual fluid,” Spike commented, rubbing a hand across his chest. “Look how that dries? Just a fine powder, all you-smelling. Bet it’s good for the skin too. Bloody marvelous stuff.”

“Uh-huh. When we need a publicist for it we’ll call you.”

He turned on his side, drawing her into the curve of his body. He patted her hip. “You might want to go to the bathroom now, love,” he whispered.

“Um, no, fine here. Buffy fine. Buffy no move.”

He rested his chin on her shoulder and purred, “Don’t want to be crude, pet, but you’ve got an arse full of vampire spunk.”

“Ew!” She found unexpected reserves of energy and leapt to her feet, clutching a blanket around her. “You’re sick!”

“Now, now, love, you weren’t near this skittish about lettin’ me put it there.”

He leaned back on his folded arms, Mr. Smug Sexy Bedhead Barechest.

She slammed both doors between her bed and the toilet. Why was he so fastidious anyway? Couldn’t just let her lie there. She paced the bathroom, naked, her blanket in a pile by the door for convenient re-grabbing on her way out. Why was it always like this? Nice Spike, Happy Buffy, than BAM! Return of Pig-Spike just when her guard was down.

And wouldn’t the stuff just… dissolve or something? Or at least keep until she next had to GO?

She sat down anyway and felt a strange slimely little plop and wasn’t that romantic? She wiped vigorously and washed her hands thoroughly and then, not feeling she’d quite gotten the sticky slimey off, she climbed into the shower and gave herself a good all-over scrub.

She felt better, physically, all clean, wrapped in towels. The good kind of sore and tired to her bones. She went back to the bedroom where Spike was still sitting up, almost exactly as she had left him. Looking anxiously at her.

She sighed. “Can we just go to sleep?”

“Course,” he said, scooting aside and smoothing the sheet for her.

She laid down and he curled around her, one hand on her hip, nothing more. She knew he was waiting for a sign from her to close in to the full-body cuddle. She wasn’t going to give it. Not this time.

She dozed a bit. They both did. But she couldn’t shut her mind down. It kept racing, and when she looked over her shoulder, Spike’s eyes were open.

“I can’t disconnect my mind and my body,” she said, looking at the air between the bed and the closet door. “When we’re in the act, I can. I guess I don’t think at all.”

“Is it that terrible, waking up next to me?” He stroked her hip gently.

“Yes,” she bit her lip. It came out sounding petulant, like she didn’t believe it herself but wanted to. “No. I don’t know. Maybe it would be better if I just paid you. Then we’d both know where we stood. Just an exchange. Money. Sex. Both of us happy.”

His hand froze, mid-stroke. His whole body was still, stiff.

“Spike?”

She turned to watch him get out of the bed and yank his jeans on so hard it had to hurt him. “What are you…?”

He snatched up his shirt and shook it at her. “You. I loved you!”

He yanked the shirt on and snatched up his boots, stepping in to them standing, as though he wouldn’t even deign sit on the same bed with her.

“But… all I said was I wish things weren’t so complicated. That things were simple. Between us.”

“No, Buffy.” He opened the bedroom door. “You said you wished I was your whore. Well I’m not. I love you. I’d be your slave. And I know, yeah, that it’s nothing but sex to you, but it isn’t to me and I’ll be damned if I let you cheapen this.” He stepped into the hall. “Or cheapen yourself. Goodbye.”

He turned to see Dawn standing at the top of the stairs, her hand on the banister and her mouth open.

“Oh bugger,” he said. He pulled the door closed and walked past Dawn with his head bowed and eyes averted.


	5. Entropy Ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this chapter is short, and mostly dialogue. Sorry. I am a total hack who leans on dialogue when unsure how to get characters from point A to point B.

Dawn pushed the half-closed bedroom door open again to look at her sister. Buffy clutched the sheet against her chest, looking disheveled and stunned.

“What did you DO?” Dawn demanded.

Buffy clutched the sheet higher. “Nothing!”

“Right,” Dawn said, and turned to march down the stairs after the angry vampire.

(She paused just a moment to consider the coolness of her, that she went AFTER angry vampires.)

Spike was in the living room, tossing pillows off the couches. He glanced at her. “Bit. Seen my blanket?”

“Did you leave it by the back door?”

Without a word of thanks he stomped his way into the kitchen.

Buffy stumbled down the steps wrapped in her sheet. “Don’t let him leave!” she hissed, waving Dawn to follow him.

“Why do I have to be the vampire relationship counselor?” Dawn shouted to no one in particular.

She ran smack into Spike in the hallway. He took a step back, scowling at her. “Wasn’t by the back door. Look, I’m trying to storm out here. Where d’ya keep the spare blankets?”

Buffy, tripping over the dragging hem of her sheet, slapped the wall behind Dawn. “We don’t have any blankets. None. There are no blankets in the entire house.”

Dawn and Spike turned remarkably similar expressions on her. She straightened and tried to wrap the sheet (and her dignity) more firmly around her.

“Nothing you can say is going to keep me here,” Spike said. “I’ve had it, Buffy. I’m leaving. Maybe leave the whole town.”

“You can’t!” Dawn grabbed his arm. “Don’t you DARE leave.”

His face softened. “Niblet…”

Buffy brightened. “There. See? Dawn. You can’t go. Dawn will cry.”

Spike wrenched his arm out of Dawn’s grip and went back into the kitchen.

He stood to the side of the back door, gingerly nudging the blinds with one fingertip and squinting out into the afternoon sun, no doubt calculating his chances if he made a break for the sewer grate.

Dawn hurried to stand by the door-knob, arms crossed, daring him.

“You’re over-reacting,” Buffy said, pausing to tug the sheet around the corner into the kitchen. “I’m sorry I said what I said, I take it all back, whatever upset you.”

“Whatever upset me?” He let the blinds fall and turned to face her. “Shall I make a list? You don’t respect me. You won’t tell your friends about me. And even if you hadn’t so eloquently stated it out loud, you do treat me like… like your vampire gigolo.”

“Can we just go back upstairs and talk about this?”

“Why, you want to say something your sister can’t hear? How about this?” Spike folded his arms. “You wouldn’t treat me the way you do if I had a soul.”

Buffy looked from his determined face to Dawn’s surprisingly supportive expression. “Spike… being soulless isn’t some sort of handicap. You are a creature of evil. You can’t go out in the sun!”

“Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m nothing but evil. Tell me that’s what you really think.”

They were both looking at her. Dawn had a sour expression Buffy didn’t know how to interpret. How had it ended up like this? She wanted to hurl something hard back in his face – like a fist or a knife. She sagged, giving up. “You’re not just evil. But without a soul, you can’t be good. You can pretend, and I know you pretend very well. But you aren’t good, Spike, and I can’t… I shouldn’t be with you.” She gathered up the ends of her sheet. “So go, if you want to go. One of us has to be strong enough to end this.”

She turned and left the room.

Spike was still where he stood.

“What did she do?” Dawn asked. He turned to her, frowning in confusion. Dawn straightened her shoulders. “Do I have to go kill my sister?”

A corner of Spike’s mouth lifted. “No. Nothing that grave.” He crossed the kitchen to the hallway.

“Wait, where are you going?” Dawn followed him to the base of the stairs. “You aren’t giving in, are you? She was a total bitch! She’s always throwing that soul thing in your face.”

Spike turned on the third step, hand on the rail. “Bit! What do I always say?”

She rolled her eyes. “’Don’t fuckin’ cuss’. I’m serious, Spike! You’re not giving in!”

“No,” he said, “I’m not. Just going to have a few words with big sis.”

Dawn let go the tight grip she’d taken on his wrist, but left her hand resting on it. “Spike… I’m not even sure _I_ have a soul.”

He smiled at her, then, an odd, fond expression, and turned his hand to catch hers. “Just stay down here. Don’t come running if you hear shouting and furniture breaking, all right?”

He let her hand fall and Dawn gripped the banister in his stead as he climbed the stairs. “Don’t! Don’t destroy the house!”

She shook her head, alone at the base of the stairs, wishing she could ask for more than that.

Buffy was sitting at her vanity, wrapped in the comforter from the bed, looking at her own teary reflection.

They both watched the bedroom door opening to admit nothing in the mirror.

Buffy rubbed upward on her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I thought you wanted to go.”

He folded his arms and leaned against her door-jamb. “Introduce me to this world where I get what I want sometime.”

She turned to face him, a hairbrush clutched to her chest where the ends of the blanket crossed. “What about what I want? A normal boyfriend who isn’t trying to kill me or belongs to a freaky military organization or…” she waved the brush helplessly. “You aren’t going to turn into a normal guy, Spike. Not with all the wishing in the world.”

“I could get a soul,” he said, tilting his chin up. “If I wanted.”

She sank a little into her comforter-cocoon. “You don’t get it. The things you just don’t get…”

“I’m not making this up, here. Made some inquiries. Looked up some legends. You think I wouldn’t put any thought into this, the first dozen times you told me you could never love me without a soul?”

She straightened with the challenge in his eyes, unable not to answer it. “So why don’t you?”

He shrugged like they were discussing changing his hair color or buying a new car. “Because of Angel.”

“Ooooh-kay.” She tossed the brush back onto the dresser. “Because Angel wouldn’t like it? Can there be only one?”

He gave her a credulous smirk and spoke very slowly. “Because I saw what it did to him.” The smirk dropped and he turned his eyes away from her, suddenly terribly interested in the curtains. “I know it’d be suicide, don’t I? Personality suicide. I go get my soul, the bloke who comes back, maybe he’d be better for you, but he wouldn’t be me, would he?” He returned to looking at her, holding her gaze. “I love you. **Me.** ” He thumped his chest painfully hard. “Evil, soulless thing. That’s what loves you, Buffy. And I’d die for you, but I won’t do that. It’d be worse than not existing, not to be myself.”

There was an awkward silence, during which both watched the minute changes of each other’s face, reading nothing. Buffy swallowed. “You had a soul before,” she said.

He shook his head. “Don’t... If it... It… yeah, I was alive and all soul-having once and don’t you think, maybe, that means I know a little more about this soul business than you? Can’t you trust me?”

She stood. “You know I can’t.” She walked past him, dragging her blanket like a queen’s cloak. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Spike sank his fist into the plaster and lathe behind him. He stared at the hole, his wrist covered in dust, and muttered, “Destroy the house. That’ll make her trust you, pillock.”

He shook his fist out and walked down the stairs to find Dawn waiting, his wool army blanket folded over her arm.

“You keep giving her second chances,” Dawn said. “Maybe I don’t see or hear everything going on between you two, but it seems like once a week or so she hurts you and then YOU apologize to her for it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Holding my blanket hostage until I give big sis what for?”

“No!” Dawn stepped back and held out the blanket. “I’m not the coercing one here.”

Spike took the blanket and walked to the back door. “What’s between me and Buffy’s just that – between us.”

Dawn hurried to slam her hand against the back door before he could open it. “Then I’m keeping it company because I keep ending up between you, too.”

He reached for her head, as though to comfort her, and stopped himself. “Bit… sorry, but love hurts. It’s supposed to.”

“Baloney.”

He tilted his head back. “Well, how ever shall I counter that insightful argument?”

“Love doesn’t have to hurt. You just don’t know any better because you’re a messed-up vampire.”

He pulled the blanket across his shoulders, letting it rest like a shawl. “You want to let me go, Bit?”

“I want you to talk to me like I’m an adult. Some monks made you think you knew me when I was 12 and wore Batz Maru tennis shoes, but I’m a thousand years old or more and even if I wasn’t I know when you’re just being stupid. No, not stupid – co-dependent.”

He leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. “True love is surrender. Mind, body, heart. Soul if you got one. I’m Buffy’s, whether she wants me or not, whether she hurts me or not. That what you want me to say?”

“Buffy’s not some romantic damsel in distress, Spike. She’s a slayer.”

“Even heroes need a strong arm to hold them now and again.”

“Yeah, but she’s stronger than you.”

Spike managed to still look scary, still, with the ratty old blanket around him. “You want me to break it off, then? You too?”

“It’s not healthy,” Dawn said.

Spike shrugged, straightening to his feet again. “Vampire. No health to worry about.” He flicked the blanket out and raised it over his head. “Be a love and open the door?”

Dawn looked for a moment like she wasn’t going to, but then she sighed heavily and turned the knob.

She watched his smoking dash to the sewer grate behind the garage, her heart in her throat as it always was when Spike went into the sunlight, only relaxing when the grate closed over him.

She closed the door and turned determinedly. Buffy was going to get a talking to.

***

Anya looked up from the counter as Spike entered the shop. “So, what’s your pleasure?”

Spike leaned heavily on the counter, staring at the jars and parcels behind it. “Fresh out of pleasure, that’s why I’m here. I need something. Numbing spell, maybe?”


	6. Seeing Each Other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay this is way, WAY overdue. Sorry about that. I had to make some decisions about how to proceed as I enter the tricky final episodes of Season Six, and, well, I know some people will be unhappy with what I do, arg! It's so anxious playing this close to canon!
> 
> *cringe* Don't hate me? We're still in the episode "Entropy"

“Well, there had to be a network connection for them to get the image from the camera – so all I had to do was find that, and I have – it’s wireless. 802.11 b. Losers.” Willow smirked in superiority. “I’ve had my packet sniffer running, filtering for image retrieval requests aaaand… bingo! There’s their IP address. Now we do a quick port scan on that puppy…”

Buffy and Xander exchanged bewildered looks. “Yeah,” Dawn said, behind them, “she’s pretty much speaking Klingon.”

“Send a geek to catch a geek,” Xander said, and patted his friend on her shoulder.

“Oo… they’re using a zombie relay host. Pretty sneaky. But not too sneaky for me! Ha! I trace your routes! All your base are belong to me!” Willow glanced back quickly, “Sorry – geek humor. Here it is. I’ve almost got it. We can tap right into their feed. Heh. Amateurs.” She leaned back. “Not that I’m getting paid for this, I mean, technically amateur here, but… hey! The better amateur!”

The monitor flickered to life, then, showing a still shot of I-beams and a water cooler. “That… that’s my worksite!” Xander jumped up. “Those little toads.”

“I can find all the cameras,” Willow said, confidently. “And their home base. Here’s another one…”

“Omigawd that’s our back yard,” Dawn slapped a hand over her mouth. “Should I go find it and tear it out or make popcorn?”

“Not just yet,” Buffy said, shifting nervously in her seat. “We don’t want them to know we’re on to them.”

“And here’s… the… um…” Willow turned around, eyes wide with panic.

Xander was staring.

Dawn frowned, trying to see around Buffy.

On the screen, Spike and Anya were pressed tight together, hands grasping, heads sliding back and forth.

“Oh. My. God.” Dawn said.

“We don’t know what we’re seeing,” Willow said hurriedly. “Look! There’s an audio feed. I’m sure he’s just… uh… got something in his eye…”

The computer speakers crackled. Spike pulled away, just slightly. He was shaking his head, just a little so as not to hit Anya in the nose. “No… no, love, I… if I weren’t… I mean, if _my friend_ wasn’t in this screwed-up relationship…”

“Oh shut it, Spike. I’m drunk and even I figured out twenty minutes ago ‘your friend’ is you and the girl is Buffy. And honestly, if she’s treating you like that, I say forget her, call it broken off, and kiss me some more, because you’re really good at that and I’m emotionally vulnerable right now so I can’t be held accountable for what I do if you reject me.”

“Well,” Spike said, brushing her curls back from her face. “Can’t have that.” He leaned closer.

“That’s it,” Xander said, and turned sharply. He stormed out of the room.

Buffy was frozen, staring at the two blonde heads working together.

“Buffy?” Dawn grabbed her arm, and when she didn’t respond, tugged it hard. “You have to go after Xander!”

Buffy turned her stunned face to her sister. “Huh?”

“Xander’s going to kill Spike!”

Buffy glanced at the monitor again, made a small, anxious noise at the back of her throat, and pulled Dawn after her. “Don’t watch that. Willow… just find the nerds’ lair! No recording!”

Willow turned in her seat to see the two Summers girls leave. She sighed. “No appreciation for my genius.” She frowned at the two figures on the monitor. “Way to steal my thunder, hormone brigade.”

Joking aside, she watched the monitor with a sour feeling in her gut, not wanting to watch, but not willing to turn away, either, lest something terrible happen for lack of her watching.

***

Anya’s mind was mostly on the tongue in her mouth when the shop-door opened with its ringing chime. And why had no one told her Spike tasted so nice? She expected blech from the cigarettes and maybe a hint of eeew corpse, but this was… the door slammed. She pushed Spike back a moment to catch her breath and say, “We’re closed,” before diving in for more of that nummy vampire taste. Plus Spike was doing something very unabashed with his fingers that had Anya’s panties feeling liable to slip right off, and/or spontaneously combust. She wasn’t particular at the moment. In fact, they were mostly off to the side anyway, and her hands were busy trying to get those darn buttons open on his jeans. The denim must have shrunk around them.

And then something or someone ripped the vampire right off her. She stumbled forward against nothing and opened her slightly-drunk eyes to see Xander slam Spike into the support post by the bookshelves. Spike sank against the wood as Xander punched him. “Get up. Get up. You’re just going to sit there? Is that the kind of man you are?”

Spike shook his head blearily. “Not gonna fight you. Chip.”

“Xander? Xander, what are you doing here?” Anya stood up, finding that the distance to the floor was not quite as far as she remembered; she wavered a bit.

“Too bad,” Xander said. He lifted the vampire by his shirt-collar and punched him in the face.

“Xander, stop it!”

“Why?” Xander turned to her. “Is this the kind of guy you want now? Some dead, soulless thing? Is this your plan, Anya? To hurt me?”

Anya stepped back, suddenly much more sober. “You left me, remember? You left **me** at the altar. I don’t owe you anything. I can be with whoever I want to be with.”

“Yeah, so jog on, dickless,” Spike said, struggling to his feet, only to have Xander lay into him again.

“I’m going to do us all a favor,” Xander said, drawing a stake from his pocket. “Something that should have been done years ago.”

Buffy arrived then. Anya quickly stepped back, waving the slayer toward the conflict.

Buffy pulled Xander off Spike almost casually. She stepped between the men and glared. “You’re not staking Spike,” she said.

Spike straightened. “Thank y…”

“No,” Buffy turned a look on him that froze him in place. “No,” she said again.

They were in a standoff, for a moment, four figures staring. Spike licked his lips, wishing he hadn’t had QUITE so much to drink that the room was wobbling still from the impact of Xander’s fist. “Buffy, I came here for you.”

An incredulous sound burst from Buffy’s lips, humorless. “You were eating Anya’s face off… for me?”

“We saw everything,” Xander said.

Anya frowned. “What? How?”

“There’s a camera,” Buffy said, her face still grim. “The nerds planted it. Anya, Xander, go home.”

“Wanted a numbing spell,” Spike shook his head, taking a step toward Buffy. “You wanted rid of me so bad, made me want to... I… we got drunk, love.”

“No excuses. Anya, Xander, go home! No more drama, no staking. And…” she dropped her hands from their post, holding Xander and Spike off, and stomped to the bookshelf. She scanned it a while, turned to frown at the table, stepped to the left, turned, and grabbed a ceramic skull off the shelf. She jerked a webcam and a bundle of wires from it, smashing them on the floor. “No more cameras.”

“Didn’t mean… didn’t want to hurt you, love.”

“You did.” Buffy looked at Xander and Anya. Xander’s fury seemed to have left him, leaving him a little collapsed without it. He and Anya weren’t looking at each other. She knew the feeling. She couldn’t bear to turn around and see Spike’s face again, lip cracked and bloody from Xander’s fist. But she felt his presence there so strongly she couldn’t turn fully away. “Congratulations. You’ve punished me for being insensitive. Now I’m going to leave. You wanted me to show you right and wrong? Right is not staking you, right now, even though I want to.” With that, neck still stiff from not wanting to look back nor look away, she walked out of the shop.

Spike fell to the floor, head hung like a rag doll.

Xander tossed his stake at his feet. “You disgust me,” he said, and followed Buffy out.

Anya wrung her hands, looking down at Spike. “I… sorry,” she said, and hurried after Xander.

Alone, Spike felt the sickening lurch of his buzz leaving him permanently. He stared at his own limp hands and the stake lying casually against his boot.

***

Buffy came home to find Dawn jumping up and down. She ran to the door and dragged her sister in by her wrist. “Shh!! Tara! Tara came back!”

“Oh. Good.”

Dawn dropped her hand and gave her an aghast glare that was ruined by the smile sneaking under it. “Aren’t you happy? Finally someone’s back together! We have to be quiet… they could be smooching…” Dawn waved her into the dinning room, where Willow’s computer still sat, forgotten, panning through its screensaver. “So, how did your thing go? Everyone still alive? Is Xander okay?”

“We’re not going to see Spike around, for a while,” Buffy said. She realized her eyes were prickling, wet just at the edges. She sniffed the tears back and rubbed the heel of her hand over them. “In fact, we’re going to make sure of it. Where did Willow put the stuff for emergency dis-invites?”

Dawn stared at her sister. “We’re not dis-inviting Spike.”

Buffy started shifting through the books on the shelf. One of them was… yes, she found the slender volume with the folded notebook paper sticking out of it that contained the vampire dis-invite spell. “I can do it myself.”

“No!” Dawn grabbed for the book.

“What happened to being quiet?” Buffy snatched her hand away, held the book behind her. “Dawn! Dawn, it’s over, okay? Me and Spike – it’s over. And I just want to…”

“Make sure it stays that way?” Dawn’s eyes were bright with tears. “Great way to be a role-model, Buffy.” She turned and ran from the room.

Buffy stood alone with the smooth, old book in her hands. She sat down, looking at its plain red cover. They thought she didn’t care. Dawn, at least, thought she was just a big meanie. But she did remember Spike’s face, the last time she used this spell. She remembered the humble joy when she’d invited him in again. She remembered how he’d protected Dawn. And she remembered how he felt, under her, above her, against her. This wasn’t being mean. This was protecting herself. From herself.

Strangely enough, she couldn’t remember the sight of him holding Anya. It’s just not in her mind, a blur of hot blood in its place.

She turned the pages – so clean and smooth as only really old book pages can be. The spell is still marked, the component list written in Willow’s careful block letters.

She went to the sideboard and got out the spare crosses. (How unbelievably religious a stranger would think they were!)

She went to start on the front door. It was open. Spike stood framed in it.

Buffy looked down at the large wooden crucifix in her fist. With a glare she held it up.

Spike rolled his eyes. “Can I say I’m sorry and I’m a dick?”

“No. You really can’t. You… you cheated on me.” She gasped as the words came out, surprised herself to say them.

“You know I didn’t mean to.”

“What, did you trip and fall on Anya’s lips?”

He took a step forward. “If you’re mad it means you do feel something. Can’t cheat if it isn’t a relationship. You want me enough to be angry; be angry, Buffy. Lay it all on me; I deserve it.” He took another step forward. Was he flirting?

“What does it take, Spike? To make you give up hope?”

“Not that.” He plucked the cross out of her hand and tossed it over his shoulder.

She balled her empty hand into a fist and punched him. “Get out. You bastard. You actually had me believing you! You… out!”

He held the back of his hand to his wounded nose. “All right,” he said, and backed onto the porch. “I’m leaving. I… didn’t want to hurt you. I’m sorry, Buffy.”

The door slammed in his face.

***

“So, you and Spike?” Willow did her best to look less glow-y and happy, though her eyes kept drifting over to Tara in the kitchen. She cleared her throat and made a good stern caring-friend expression. “For a while now?”

“Since… yeah, a while.” Buffy shook her head. “Before I got the job at Doublemeat.”

“Wow. And he never said anything! I mean, well, you have to admit, that’s a big surprise. Not exactly Mr. Restraint. Wait… oh my god, at your birthday? When we were all trying to push you toward Richard?”

Buffy nodded, and grimaced. She didn’t like to think about that day – about Spike, coming on to her in the kitchen, completely blithe about the bruises still circling his face. He never once mentioned the beat-down in the alley. Wasn’t that proof he wasn’t morally right? She’d winced every time she saw him that night, but couldn’t make herself bring it up, and he’d smiled like the bruises weren’t there. Maybe he didn’t know; he couldn’t exactly check a mirror.

“Woah.” Willow blinked a few times. “Suddenly, I have weird respect for Spike.”

“Respect? Willow, he was my creepy stalker sort-of-boyfriend, and he didn’t even stay faithful!”

“Oh, well, yeah, okay, you put it that way and, understandably – eew. But I’ve got a little experience on the unrequited thing, and I just… we were stuck in that party for so long. Chip or no chip I think I would have come up with a way to make Richard a little less Rich and more Ard… that sounded more threatening in my head.”

“Whatever.” Buffy plucked despondently at the afghan over the back of the couch. “It’s over now. I finally had the courage to break it off.”

“But you don’t look happy.” Willow gestured toward the kitchen, where Tara was singing a little while mixing pancakes. “Forgiveness! It’s what’s for breakfast!”

Buffy leaned her head on her arm. “Will, I feel like crap because it’s harder for me to forgive him sticking his tongue down Anya’s throat than murdering hundreds, probably thousands of people. And the first one he’s actually sorry for, when it’s the second one that should be why I broke it off, long before this.”

“So… why didn’t you?” When Buffy only turned her face into the flesh of her arm and groaned, Willow pressed. “There has to be a reason. Was it thrall? Does Spike have thrall? Did he threaten you somehow? Did he… the more I think about this, the more I wonder if I’m going to have to beat him up or turn him into a bat.”

“No. No.” Buffy hid her face. How do you tell your best friend it was all about the sex?

“The bat idea is really starting to appeal to me. It has irony.”

“He didn’t threaten me. Not really. Though he did… warn me, I guess. I… I just kept going to him. Like I couldn’t stop. Like an addiction.” She raised her teary eyes to meet Willow’s.

Willow’s eyebrows raised. “Oh. It was sex.”

“Willow!”

“Not exactly a virgin here, Buffy. And come on, Spike doesn’t exactly have the world’s most subdued sexuality. If I was going to get involved with Spike – not that I would – but it wouldn’t be to talk about moldy old rock bands and a hundred years of killing people.”

“There’s something wrong with me. I… I’m supposed to be this hero. I willingly died to save the world, and my sister. But ever since I came back, I’ve been so… selfish. Needy.”

“Um, wanting to relieve stress with totally hot vampire guy? Not exactly hard to understand, Buffy. You’re normal. You’re still human, right? Chosen and all?”

“Stop it! Stop being so understanding. This isn’t right. You can’t make it right. No matter how much I want it… he’s evil. That should be the end of the argument. I should be happy right now. Happy it’s over. Relieved.” She straightened. “Maybe I am, I just don’t realize it yet.”

Willow stood, brushing off her slacks. “That’s some super-power denial there.”

“Pancakes!” Tara called from the kitchen.

What a domestic goddess. Buffy sighed. She should be the goddess-y one. It was her job, as Dawn’s guardian, to waft around the kitchen in a frilly apron smelling like flowers and making pancakes from scratch.

Instead she was the barely-adequate one, working a job that didn’t cover the bills, and betrayed by her not-a-boyfriend in front of everyone.

Tara looked up from slipping pancakes onto plates. Dawn sat at the counter, in a perfectly unslutty sweater, looking like the sweetest, most well-adjusted teen in the world while she beamed at Tara and asked for the funny shaped pancakes.

It was evil.

Buffy poured herself a glass of milk from the gallon that was sitting on the table. “When did we get actual milk?”

“I brought some things over,” Tara said with an apologetic blush. “Circles or funny shapes?”

“Circles. Nice, boring, predictable circles.”

Dawn gave her a funny look at that, fork still against her bottom lip. She twirled it and cut another mouthful of pancake. “Did you do that _thing_ last night?” Her voice dripped with disgust.

“No. We didn’t have all the stuff.”

“Sorta de-witch-a-fied the house,” Willow said. “But… uh, Tara can do it. Can’t you? For Buffy?”

Tara nodded. She set the griddle back on the stove and took off her oven mitt. “If you think a dis-invite spell is really necessary.”

“It’s necessary. For the safety of vampires who shall remain nameless.”

Dawn made a little huff noise and pushed away her plate. “I’m not hungry all of a sudden.”

Buffy glared at her. “The minute you’re done making your dramatic gesture you’ll just eat them cold.”

“Maybe someone should go check on him,” Tara said. “And Xander, too.”

“Could we use the nerdcam web?” Buffy looked hopefully at Willow.

Willow grimaced. “We don’t want to be detected, Buffy. Anyway, I locked down their location this morning. You want to check it out?”

“Yes.” Buffy sighed. “The slayage goes on. Soap-opera moments not withstanding. I’ll check out the nerd lair. You try and see if Xander is all right. I don’t want him disappearing for a week again.”

“I’ll check on Spike,” Dawn said, with a daring little lift of her chin.

Buffy scowled, started to object, but then lost all strength to. “Fine. Fine. Check on Spike. Make sure he’s not doing anything stupid, evil, or evilly stupid. But don’t you dare, Dawn, don’t you dare give him the slightest hint he has a hope in hell of coming back into this house.”

Dawn straightened to her full height. “I can be adult about things, Buffy. I am sixteen.”

“Oh god. When I was sixteen I really thought that too.” Buffy blinked in horror while Dawn carried her dish to the sink like it was a royal procession.

***

Spike was rolling his head on the edge of the sarcophagus, wondering how the undead managed to still be susceptible to hangovers – didn’t seem fair at all, what with no circulation, no usual need for water.

Somehow, he always felt like he had to piss, when he was hung-over. But of course he didn’t, and wouldn’t, but there was still that weird feeling, like ice in his guts, and no convenient way to get rid of it.

The door to his crypt swung open with a sound like the battleship Yamoto crashing into his skull. He winced and covered his eyes against the sudden influx of light.

A bleary figure ran up to him – sneakers, smell of cucumber-melon body wash, and that bubblegum scented lipstick. Dawn. Oh, hell.

Dawn pushed his hand away from his eyes and leaned over him, long hair falling on his shoulder. “Get up. Buffy is, like, _this_ close to taking you back!”


	7. Bared Souls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not happy with this chapter. Grr. Do I say that too much? Well, read it anyway, I dare you!

“Well, that was a whole lot of nothing,” Buffy tossed her bag on the couch.

Tara looked up from the book she was highlighting. “No lair?”

“Oh, there was lair.” Buffy dropped onto the couch and pulled the elastic off her frayed ponytail. “Boy, was there lair. Real ‘Doctor No’ set-up: buzz saws and trip-wires. Geeks.”

Tara closed her book and capped her highlighter. Economic theory would have to wait. “They knew you were coming?”

“Once again, world-saveage – or at least town-saveage, fails on account of Buffy’s screwed-up personal life.” She wrapped her rubber-band on her wrist and picked dejectedly at it. “I should have been out there, finding them, not going after _Spike_.”

“No.” Tara scooted close to put her hand on Buffy’s arm. “No, sweetie. You can’t blame yourself like that. H-he… you… after what you saw? How could you do anything different?”

“I don’t know. I just know that since coming back, I’ve done everything wrong. Everything.”

“You haven’t.”

Buffy shook her head. “Tara, you’re, like, sweetness personified, but come on. Fate has thrown me the lamest bad guys in history and I can’t even defeat them! Xander’s never going to speak to any of us again, Willow can’t use magic – what are we supposed to do?”

“Hey, I may not be Willow,” Tara straightened with a smug smile, “but I can sling a spell or two, you know.”

Buffy knew she should be strategizing, but all that came out of her mouth was, “Why did you come back?”

Tara blinked, her brow crinkling a little. “D-do you not want me here?”

“Willow did the unthinkable to you, Tara. She violated your _mind_. But you’re back. You forgave her. I mean, you did, didn’t you?”

Tara blushed and looked away. “I… I know she won’t do it again. I trust her.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not my business, anyway. I just… it’s not even relevant. Spike didn’t just break my trust, he _is_ evil. Definition thereof. I can’t forget or forgive that. I shouldn’t.”

Tara’s hand once again reached for Buffy’s. Her fingertips were so soft. When Buffy raised her eyes to meet hers, Tara said, “Sometimes what we should do just makes everyone miserable. You start wondering why you’re supposed to in the fist place. For me, not being with Willow was about my safety. But it hurt, being away from her, and then I realized, the danger had passed. She won’t hurt me again – not like that. Any other way we might hurt each other in the future? I-I can accept.”

Tara was smiling, calm, eyes clear and completely in control. Buffy wondered how long it had been since she felt in control of anything, even herself. She threw her arms around Tara and said, “I’m so glad you’re back. If Willow ever hurts you again, I’ll find a way to turn her into a toad!”

Tara laughed and patted Buffy’s back. “We’ll get through this. They’re only three guys our age! I’m not afraid,” Tara said.

“Right.” Buffy pushed herself back from the embrace. “Right. Because we were talking about the geeks. That’s what’s bothering me. Yup. Three geeks.”

“And Spike,” Tara smiled knowing, gathering up her books. “I should start dinner.”

There was a knock at the front door just as Tara left the room. Buffy opened the door to find Spike standing there. She turned to look behind her, wondering if Tara could possibly have conjured this – but Tara was innocently setting her books on the dining table.

“Hello, Buffy.” Spike was in his standard “cleaned up” attire – the red button-down and a knotty silver necklace, his hair pomaded in a more careful manner than usual, a touch of dark eyeliner – just enough to make him panty-combusting-ly pretty. He held a brocade-covered box in his hands, like the kind you got at Chinese gift stores with paperweights or sets of rice-ware bowls.

Buffy tried to bear up under the visual assault. She was so tired. Tara – Tara of all people, had joined the ‘we’re okay with Spike’ parade. Everyone was willing to let her keep dating evil. Everyone but her own conscience, and even it was kinda wishy-washy. “What do you want? Because I have work in an hour.”

“Will only take a second,” Spike said. He looked down at the box in his hands, and then nervously up at her again. He looked so young, boyish, unsure.

Buffy bit her lip and nodded.

“Just wanted to give you this,” he said, and held out the box.

“Spike, you can’t buy me back.”

“It’s not that. Just… open it, okay? Feel stupid just holding it out. Promise it’s pretty, and not stolen. You don’t like it, I’ll take it back where it came from.”

Buffy took the box. It was heavy. “I shouldn’t be accepting gifts. And I’m not mad… not that mad. Just disappointed. I knew you….” She stared at the glowing crystal ball nestled in the padded box. She pulled it out. “Is this…?”

“Orb of Thesula. Magic Box keeps an ungodly number of ‘em in stock these days.” Spike smirked. “Gee, wonder why.” He rubbed his thumb over his lips and, with a failing attempt at casual, said, “Anyway, yeah. That’s my soul.”

“Oh god,” Buffy said. She backed into the room, her arm holding the orb out as though to get away from it. Her calves hit the coffee-table and she inadvertently fumbled.

Spike dove to catch the crystal sphere before it hit the ground. “Careful,” he said. “Don’t know what happens if this bugger breaks.” He examined the sphere then, as calmly as offering her a flower, held it out to her.

Buffy felt numb. Instead of taking the proffered orb, she backed her way to the couch and sat down. “Spike, you can’t just give someone your soul as a present. It’s – god, I can’t believe I’m even going there – it’s sacrilege.”

“It’s mine, innit? Can give away what’s mine.” He looked down at the orb, ran his thumb along the rough surface. “Had some things I was gonna say. Rehearsed, you know. This was a bitch to get, plenty of time to pace and rehearse. Sounded good, too. Think the gist of it was: Take this, Buffy, and know that I’m always in your power. You hold my soul. No more now than you did before, either. I gave you my heart, even though you didn’t want it, and now I’m giving you my soul – which you sort of asked for. It’s a symbol, like. Maybe not undying love or whatnot since you don’t believe I can love you, but a symbol of what I’m willin’ to do, for you.” He knelt by her, took her limp hand off her knee, turned it over and set the orb on her palm. “And you can do with it what you like. ‘M giving you that power, love.”

She stared in disbelief. “I can’t accept this,” she said. “It’s too much.”

“Too much for you is never enough,” Spike said, and rose to his feet. “I’ll go then. That was all I wanted to say.”

“Wait! Spike!” She jumped up as he walked to the door.

He turned, holding her off with one hand. “Really, Buffy, the longer I stay, the more I say, and the less this… this gesture stands on its own, yeah? I’ll be at my crypt.”

She was left, stunned, holding the orb while he sprinted across the street, duster over his head, for the big oak that shaded a sewer grate.

Only then did she realize he’d done the whole thing during the day. His SOUL. He carried his soul to her through the sewers and ran with it under his arm.

She was still standing in the doorway, the orb held tight to her stomach, when Tara’s hand fell on his shoulder. She jumped a foot and nearly dropped the orb again. She turned with an unfairly angry face to her gentle friend.

“M-m-maybe you should set that down,” Tara said.

Buffy felt the orb – strangely warm and was it buzzing or was that her imagination? “Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod.” She hurried to the coffee table and dropped the thing in its unassuming fabric-covered box. “Is it real? Tara – I’m not the sort to take jewelry in to be appraised after being given it, but this…”

“It’s real,” Tara said. She wrung her hands nervously and made a vague gesture. “I can – I can see it.”

“How could he do that? Why would he do that? How am I supposed to react? I’m having a real, real hard time reacting!”

Tara fell limply onto the sofa next to her. “Me too,” she confessed. Both stared at the orb. “It’s kinda sweet, though, i-in a blasphemy sort of way.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said, weakly, “I think that’s how he meant it.”

“D-do you suppose he meant for you to… I mean, for me, or Willow…”

“He told me he thought it would be suicide to get his soul back. Death of personality.”

“Oh. So no, then.”

Buffy shook her head. “I’m not sure it is ‘no, then’. That’s what scares me. He – with Glory, on the tower, heck, back with Drusilla – he was always willing to kill himself for love. He keeps saying it, too. I don’t know if that’s some weird, random streak of noble, or more evidence of just how not human he is.”

The front door opened. Dawn bounced in, books on her arm. “Ohmigawd am I famished. Never going to a study session without pizza again.” She set the books down and looked at her sister and Tara, then at the unassuming box they were both staring at. “Is that it? Spike’s gift? What did he get?” She picked up the box and frowned at the glowy orb. “Huh. I told him to go for jewelry or boots. What’s this? Is it magic?”

“Dawn,” Buffy warned, holding a hand out to stop her sister. “Was this your idea?”

Dawn smiled. “So did it work? Are you going to take him back?”

Buffy rose in her seat. Tara grabbed her arm. “Don’t. Don’t kill your sister.”

The humor broke the serious silence. Buffy almost giggled. “What did you _do_ , Dawn?”

“What? I just told him to get you something. A present. Something meaningful and expensive. Like suede boots.”

Tara pursed her lips. “I suppose a soul is something like suede boots.”

“No way.” Dawn picked the orb up out of its box and stared at it. “No way. Is this one of those things like with Angel?”

“It’s a soul, not a toy,” Buffy said, and snatched the orb from her sister. She stuffed it back in its box and closed the lid, sliding the little toggle-clasp back into place. “I can’t believe you talked him into such a weird, freaky, sentimental gesture.”

“Yeah, that is lame. I mean, what are you supposed to do with it? Look at it?”

Buffy looked at the box in her hands. “It was a gesture. A symbol.”

Dawn said, “Buffy, he’s totally sorry about the thing with Anya. I can’t believe you wouldn’t want to take him back.”

Buffy sighed. “I’m taking _this_ back.” She hefted the box, shook her head, and went looking for her coat. “Call Doublemeat? Tell them I may be late?”

***

“Spike?” She shifted her feet, suddenly nervous about entering his crypt uninvited. How many times had she just walked in like she owned the place? But now it was different – because they were… something. They were different.

“Here! I’m here!” Spike popped up from the lower level. His hair was a little disheveled and a pillow-crease marked his cheek. “Was… uh, just readin’.”

Buffy nodded. She stepped into the crypt, holding the box in front of her. “I came to give you this back.”

He rubbed the heel of his hand on his cheek. “You don’t, uh, don’t want it, then?”

“I think you know why I can’t accept this, Spike. Souls shouldn’t be gifts.”

He was trying to hide his disappointment, she could tell, as he took the box. His eyes never left it. “Right. Right, well, said you didn’t have to keep it. I... it’s no bother. Just put it on my bedside table, maybe, or see if that warlock bloke can magic it back wherever it’s been loitering these past hundred years. Thanks for not just wreckin’ it.”

“Spike.” She put her hand on his arm. He slowly met her gaze. “That doesn’t mean I wasn’t moved.”

“Wanted you to know that I never meant to hurt you. Never mean to… whatever I do wrong, Buffy, I’m tryin’. Tryin’ to be the man you deserve.”

“I haven’t been very deserving lately.” She looked down at her hand on his arm. So easy, to touch, to feel that skin. “I guess… I guess I should give you the chance to keep trying.”

There was a long silence. Neither moved, and only she breathed. “Wait – are you… are you taking me back?”

She grimaced. “Yup. Grand gesture 1, Buffy 0.” She turned her hand, let the backs of her fingers travel over the hard curve of muscle. “I know I shouldn’t; I know it’s wrong. Maybe there is something wrong with me, some part of my soul that didn’t come back. I shouldn’t want to forgive a mass-murderer.”

“Never killed anyone you knew. No one important.”

Buffy stepped back and smacked him, hard. “Listen to yourself!”

He touched his cheek. “Just don’t see the bother over people you don’t even know.”

“Every little girl you killed was someone’s Dawn. Every guy someone’s Xander. Don’t you get it?”

He wanted to say that thinking of all his male kills as Xander was actually pretty fulfilling, but even he knew that would get him knocked on his ass so he set the box on the sarcophagus lid, bit his lip, and shrugged. “’S why you should keep it, pet. You’re the keeper of my conscience, yeah? You tell me what’s right and wrong.”

“I don’t want that responsibility! I’m The Slayer. Don’t you think I have enough weighing on my head?”

“Want to help you. Ease your burdens.”

“Well, you can’t.”

“Yeah. I can. Let me take you grocery shopping.”

She stared at him. “Where’d you get the money? For this orb? Anya wouldn’t give it to you. Not even if…” Her eyes grew wide, realizing. “Oh, no… you didn’t… with Anya…”

He cut her off quickly. “I paid cash. It was legit.”

“Tell me how. And who did the spell.”

“It isn’t important.”

She braced her hands on her hips. “How am I supposed to be your… your moral guardian if you don’t tell me these things?”

He scratched the back of his head and shrugged. “I had some cash on hand. Enough for the orb. Can’t recount where every penny came from, but I didn’t steal any of it, all right?”

“And the spell?”

“Warlock. Rack – you remember him. Yeah, evil bugger, but he was willing to do the spell. I just had to do some stuff for him. Nothing nasty.”

“Do some stuff?” Buffy gaped. “Isn’t that the guy you told me was no good? What stuff? Spike! Do you ever think at all? Is there nothing in that head but hair roots?”

“No one got hurt, nothing got damaged. It was a power ritual, Buffy. I know about this stuff. Can’t you trust me even a little?”

His eyes were pleading, wide, and glinting wet in the low light of the crypt. Buffy wrapped her arms tight around herself. “I want to,” she said.

He put his hands on her elbows. “So do. Just a little, love. ‘S all I’m asking.”

“I don’t want this responsibility.”

“I know, love. But it won’t be bad. I’ll be so good. So good, Buffy. I’ll really think about things, I swear. I can do this.”

Buffy took a step back. “I don’t know if _I_ can.”

“Only way to know is to try.”

“If you had a soul…”

“I do.” He waved at the box on the sarcophagus. “An’ it’s not going anywhere.”

Buffy shook her head a little. “I don’t… I don’t make every moral decision right.”

“And I don’t make every one wrong,” he countered. He was looking down at her, now, his features all soft, so beautiful. It would be too easy to assume innocence behind those blue eyes. “Forget the past, love. Let’s not have this same argument over and over. Let’s just try.”

Her brain had stopped processing the problem. “I need to go kill something. Come patrol with me.”

Spike whooped a cheer like he’d been invited to the best party in the history of parties. He dove to the left, scooping his duster up from where it lay on the other sarcophagus. “Let’s have ourselves a time, then,” he said, and, after slipping into his coat, crooked his elbow toward Buffy.

Buffy couldn’t help a small smile. “This isn’t a date.”

“You keep telling yourself that. First dibs to the lady. Let’s see what we can find to slay.”

Slowly, almost reluctantly, she took his arm, and they walked out into the night together.


	8. Balls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next B&S. Huh... I just noticed that could stand for "Buffy and Spike" heee! So appropriate.
> 
> Anyway: warnings, um... character near-death.

Xander paced Buffy’s living room. She was supposed to be home from Doublemeat, now. He’d called them and confirmed she’d been in for her usual four-hour Tuesday night mini-shift. He hit his fists together and considered just leaving this for tomorrow. It wasn’t like the Scooby patrol was coming first these days, for anyone.

Then he heard them.

Buffy giggled. “No! I’m not letting that go! It’s the same thing!”

“Didn’t say I’d kill anyone! You know that. Just said, you know, they weren’t important. I mean to me. I mean, as I thought of things. Not now, then. Just making a point.”

“Spike! Do we have to go over this again? You’re worse than, I don’t know, Cookie Monster!”

Xander brushed aside the front window curtain. Spike and Buffy were at the start of the front walk. Spike had his arms around her, they were looking into each other’s eyes with slight smiles, though Buffy was leaning forward strangely.

Spike held up one hand in a mockery of the boy scout salute. “I said I wouldn’t kill anyone and I won’t. Off the sauce.”

“Because of the chip.”

“No! Because you wouldn’t like it.”

“Oh, that’s so much more noble,” Buffy smirked, holding onto his shirt with both fists.

It was like they were reading the script of one of their arguments, but hadn’t gotten the scene direction that they were supposed to be mad – they were _playing_ at arguing. Xander’s jaw hung slack.

Spike bent down to kiss Buffy without moving her. “Come, Miss Buffy, gotta get you inside.”

“If you didn’t keep stopping every five minutes, we’d have been in and I would be… ow,” she winced as they turned toward the house and took a limping step, “soaking this pain out of my back already.”

“Got to make sure you’re all right, don’t I?”

“Spike. I’d have walked myself home three times now, injury or no injury,” she said, but she was smiling.

Xander thought he was going to scream. He let the curtain drop and marched to the front door, yanking it open and turning on the porch light. “Hey you kids, get off my lawn!”

It didn’t come out as joking as he intended. Spike flashed him a look of pure, stone hatred, but Buffy was just smiling -- weakly, he now noticed. She leaned heavily on Spike as he led her up the walk.

Xander reached for Buffy, “What did you do to her?”

Spike stepped back, hands up, all offended like it was shocking to suspect an evil vampire of doing anything wrong. “Just some random vamp threw her into the Rosewood tombstone, is all. Half an acre of sandstone and marble and that wanker had to pick the only granite tomb in sight.”

“You were with her and you let her get hurt. You’re even more useless than I thought.”

Buffy grimaced as she straightened. “Xander, stop. I’m fine. Just need to take a long, hot bath. Alone!” She added this last with a pointed look at Spike.

She pushed past both men’s offers of help and climbed the stairs on her own, though she gripped the handrail tight.

Spike leaned against one of the porch posts and lit a cigarette. “What’s got you seeing red, not-at-the-altar boy?”

“You. Standing there like you own the place. Like you own a piece of her.”

“’S not your porch,” Spike said, paying more attention to his cigarette than to Xander.

“I’m here on business.”

Spike shrugged. “Me too. Had to walk a lady home from work, by way of cemeteries and killing baddies.”

“She hated you.” Xander paced, turned and glared at Spike. “She was as pissed off as I was. Now you’re giggling together?”

“In the interim,” Spike smirked, head low over his cigarette, “she had a good slay.”

“I’m not going to dignify that pun. Don’t forget, fangless. I can still beat the crap out of you.”

“But you won’t.” Spike titled his head back, expelling smoke in a smooth stream. “Buffy wouldn’t like it. Welcome to my pain.”

“Get out. We don’t need your color commentary and for once we don’t need your muscle.”

Spike jabbed his thumb needlessly up at the porch roof above him. “I am ‘out’, you Rhodes Scholar.”

“Okay: Leave. We don’t need any creepy stalking tonight, thanks.”

“Not sure I should leave my girl alone with a psychotic anti-commitment reject.”

“She isn’t your girl.”

“Miss that memo, did you?”

Xander thought he’d seen Spike smug – it was practically the vampire’s default setting. This was a whole new level of smug. Cat who ate his arch-nemesis canary in front of his rival.

Disgusted, Xander walked back into the house. He couldn’t leave – then Spike would win. And yes, Xander knew that was childish. But he couldn’t stand there with Spike another minute without doing something more childish and yes, Buffy wouldn’t like it.

Behind him, he heard Spike mutter, “Would’ve busted right through marble, she would have. Had to go for the bleedin’ granite. Our luck.”

Xander made as much noise as possible searching the kitchen counter for the little notepad he knew was always there for grocery lists. He hoped his every move projected enough “keep the fuck away” to keep the vampire the fuck away.

He found it – the narrow paper with orange and blue flowers on it. He ripped off the top sheet, which read “Milk Butter Eggs Cereal”, and got out a pen to write on the next sheet.

“Buffy – Warren has super powers now. Super-strong. Not cool. Need to act on this ASAP.” He looked at his large block letters with dissatisfaction. He’d used up half the page so quickly and it didn’t look like it said the right words. “Call me, X” he added, then ripped the sheet off and stuck it on the fridge, front and center, with the sunflower magnet. He looked at it a moment, unsure if it stood out enough. What if she just didn’t notice it? He pushed the take-out menus and photos of dawn further away from it, making a little clear space.

Satisfied, he stomped to the back door.

“Oi!”

Xander’s teeth ground. He turned to find Spike sauntering through the kitchen, lit cigarette bobbing in his lips, no doubt dropping ash wherever he pleased. “Can’t use the girls’ stuff like that.”

“I’m leaving a note. You, I have nothing to say to.”

Spike plucked the note from the fridge. “What’s this?”

“Damn it, Spike!”

Spike frowned. “Who’s Warren?”

Xander snatched the note out of his hands, ripping it.

He fell back against the back door, hands in his hair. “Is fate, specifically, trying to get me to kick your ass, or is it just a fetish of yours, Spike?”

Spike tapped his cigarette in the sink. “Wait… I know that name. That’s robot-boy, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and thank you for reminding me of that. How can she _look_ at you, knowing what you did with that _thing_?”

Spike narrowed his eyes at Xander. “Bugger off about that thing. Ancient fuckin’ history and I paid my time in embarrassment and humiliation all fuckin’ summer, didn’t I?”

Xander crumbled up what remained of his note and tossed it at the sink – and incidentally Spike who was standing in front of it. “Tell her to call me when she gets out of the bath,” he said. “If you care at all about doing good.”

“I don’t,” Spike said. “But I’ll tell her.”

Xander waved dismissively at him and walked out the door.

Spike finished his cigarette and dropped the butt in the sink, where it hissed itself out in shallow water.

He wondered how serious Buffy was about that ‘alone’ clause on her bath. Did she really want to be alone, or was this a cue for him to step up and do the nurturing boyfriend routine? (He was rather good at the nurturing boyfriend routine, in his own unbiased opinion.)

He tapped his knuckles on the bathroom door as a formality before nudging it open.

Buffy sat up in the tub, arms wrapped around her chest, “Spike!”

“Droopy boy’s gone, an’ I started thinking you were all alone up here, all naked and…” he leaned in the door, peering over her folded arms, “wet.”

“SO not in the mood! Quiet relaxy time! Vampire goes shoo!”

Spike tilted his head. “Vampire comes back in an hour with wine and cheesecake?”

“You’re evil.”

“Yeah,” he said, proudly, like it was a compliment, “but you’re reforming me.”

“Buffy?” Willow ran up the steps and stopped, frowning at Spike standing half in the bathroom door, his shoulder on the jamb.

“In the tub!”

“Oh.” Willow stood on her tip-toes to look over Spike’s shoulder, as he tried to angle his body to block the view. “We finally have something. A lead on the trio. It just came over the APB…”

“Oh, right. Supposed to tell you, that Warren bloke’s got super-strength somehow. He did a little recreational rhinoplasty on Xander.”

Letting go of her breasts, Buffy slapped the surface of the water to make noise. “Bath! I am taking a bath! Does no one get this? Out! Both of you! OUT!”

Willow and Spike muttered their apologies and closed the bathroom door. They looked at each other as the silence stretched awkwardly.

“So,” Willow said.

“Yeah,” Spike said.

Then they both spoke at once: “How about that robot-boy…” “She doesn’t normally take bath…”

Two grimaces.

“So,” Willow said.

Spike ran a hand over his head. “I’ll be downstairs, yeah? When Herself’s gotten all pretty again, we’ll go after these nerds.”

“Yeah, good plan.” Willow hopped a little on the balls of her feet. “Oh, and Spike? Good to have you back.”

They smiled at each other, and Spike ducked his head. “Don’t go all mushy, witch. I’m gonna go have a smoke.”

***

Daylight was approaching fast, but Spike insisted on coming with Buffy to foil the bank robbery. Willow drove them to the location, her laptop perched precariously between the gear shift and the center console as she checked, sometimes in the middle of intersections, on the progress of their query.

Spike grabbed the steering wheel from the back seat as they slipped through a red light amid honking horns. “We’ll do marvelous in the fight if Red kills us first!”

“Sorry, sorry. But my mom would kill me if I let a vampire drive.”

“You could have had me drive,” Buffy said.

Spike and Willow shared a meaningful glance.

“Just get us there,” Spike growled.

Willow had barely reached a stop in the alleyway when Buffy jumped from the car. Spike cursed and followed her.

There they were – the three geeks, all in attendance. Warren was hefting bags out of an armored car.

Buffy set her hands on her hips. “Hi. Is this your bank? ‘Cause if not, there’s gonna be a fee for that.”

“I wondered when Super-Bitch would show up,” Warren said, dropping the bags of money. He advanced with a grin.

“You really have a problem with strong women, don’t you?” She took one easy step forward and punched him, underhand, in the gut.

Surprisingly, the little twerp didn’t fold like a pita, but just gasped and countered with a punch of his own.

If Buffy was shocked by the strength of the blow, she didn’t let it show, she went to work.

Spike held his coat over his head as the first rays of dawn filled the sky. He sprinted to the nice, shady overhang Warren’s hench-geeks had conveniently chosen to stand in. “Hello, boys!” He said with a smile. “Who wants to be breakfast?”

They cringed as expected, but then Jonathan squared his small shoulders and stepped forward. “You threatened the Fett! You let us believe you could hurt us!”

“Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because I’m a mean old vampire.” Spike slipped into game-face and licked his lips.

Andrew whimpered.

“We know about the chip!” Jonathan said, though he didn’t sound very confident. “Y-you can’t hurt us.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “He can’t hurt us.”

Spike continued to advance on the shaking Jonathan and cringing Andrew, only to pause, his fingers claw-like in the air, all looming villain, and sink back, game-face fading. “Bollocks. Is there anyone who doesn’t know about that?”

Jonathan opened one eye, then the other, and hurried to step back, out of the vampire’s imposing personal space.

Spike grabbed a handful of Andrew’s jacket as he tried to turn and run. “Not so quick now, half-pint. I don’t need to hurt you to hold you here.”

Andrew turned as stiff and still as a rabbit in a hound’s jaws. “Whatever you do to me, no matter how many h-humiliating and lengthy tortures you have planned, I’ll never betray Warren!”

“Promises, promises,” Spike smirked. He turned to watch Buffy. The sun was high enough now that golden light shone in her hair. Robot-boy had been, surprisingly, holding his own, but Buffy turned and – oh yeah, her patented mule-kick. Spike winced a little in sympathy. That one hurt.

Warren crashed into a stone wall that crumbled over top of him.

“NOOOOOO!” Andrew cried, jerking forward in Spike’s grip as though to rush to his leader’s aid.

“Aw, did robot-boy have a bad fall? Pity. I almost liked him.”

Buffy smacked her hands together as though to remove dust and turned to face Jonathan and Andrew. “There’s two ways this can end. And right now, I’m thinking they’re both going to hurt.”

“Oh god,” said Jonathan.

The rubble shifted, crumbled and fell apart as Warren stood. “Wow, that almost hurt, kitten.”

“Kill her!” Andrew squirmed against the hold on his shoulder. “Kill her!”

Spike snarled and yanked the boy back hard, wincing himself with pain.

Jonathan ran forward, shouting, he jumped on Buffy’s back.

“Woah, sparky! Didn’t know you had it in you!”

Spike dropped Andrew and ran into the sunlight to grab Jonathan, but not before he hissed in Buffy’s ears, “The orbs! Smash his orbs!”

Jonathan smelled burning vampire and sidewalk as he gasped, recovering from the impact of being thrown. He blinked, not sure if he was hallucinating as he saw Andrew run out and drag Spike back into the shade. This was not what being a super-villain was supposed to be like. Who was on whose side?

In a moment, he discovered, no one, as Warren took off in a blast of jet-power, and Andrew as well, though he hit an overhang and fell to earth. Jonathan sighed and just raised his hands, waiting for the inevitable.

***

Spike sat alone in the Summer’s household kitchen, surrounded by its normal kitchen-smells. He’d taken a bit of scorch. It was strange. You’d think he’d sunburn, but he got small patches of ash on his skin when these things happen, the flesh raw and red underneath. He washed them off at the sink, ran the wash-cloth with its residual food-smells behind his neck.

In the window over the sink, he saw Buffy going through the garden with a short pole – she was poking for nerd cameras and listening devices. Sometimes the sun caught her hair so sharply it looked like metal and he had to blink and turn away.

Upstairs, the witches were having their own homecoming. He heard soft sounds, rustled bedding. They were in no hurry to get up.

Dawn was still snoring, a warm little ball of teenage exhaustion. My god, Spike thought, but it should be illegal for an evil, soulless thing like him to feel this content.

He took another blood-bag out of the freezer and set about thawing it. When next he looked out the window, Xander was there, hands in pockets, kicking the grass.

Obviously serving himself up a big old platter of crow. Well, good. Seemed the whelp was a man after all.

The microwave beeped. Spike took out the bag and massaged it, feeling for ice crystals. Finding only a few he slashed a corner open with a fang – far more convenient than reaching for a knife – and poured it out into a mug. One minute thirteen seconds on high. It was good to have a microwave.

He sat back to sip his blood and watch the Buffy-Xander show. He didn’t need to listen in to see the emotions: a little wrinkle of the brow here, a hanging head there.

“Just hug already,” he said to the window, like he would talk to his telly.

Unlike the characters on Passions, these two seemed to get the hint, and walked closer to each other, hands reaching out. “Houston, we have hug-off.” Spike raised his cup in salute. “And they all lived happily ever after. Even the soddin’ vampire.”

Xander and Buffy broke apart, both frowning, looking to the left.

A gunshot. Gunshots. Buffy crumpled in pain.

“Buffy!”

Spike’s mug cracked as it hit the bottom of the empty sink. He tried at first to jump through the window, scrambling for its latch against the sizzling sun. Then he shook his head, ran to the back door.

He stopped when from upstairs he heard a shriek, a wail. “Tara!”


	9. Ethics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not happy with this chapter - we're closing out Season Six and the action is, well, dizzying if you read the episode transcripts! This is more or less during "Villains" and "Two to Go". Trying not to just, you know, re-tell the episodes here.
> 
> Warnings: Canon character death.

Spike ran all the way to the witches’ bedroom, hoping his hesitation in the kitchen wouldn’t cost him… cost him everything. “Buffy will be all right,” he told himself as he took the stairs two at a time. “She’s strong. She’s in the sunlight but she’s strong and she’ll be all right. The white witch…”

Willow knelt on the floor, Tara draped over her lap, paler than ever next to the growing red bloom on her bosom.

Willow glanced up, and instantly her gaze was riveted on Spike. “Help her! Save her.”

“I…” Spike heard Tara’s heart beat, its feeble last beats were sounding now. How well he knew that sound.

“Save her!” Willow screamed. “Tara! Tara, sweetie.” She gathered her lover to her, stroking her hair with fingers sticky with blood. “Hang on, sweetie, just a little while. Spike… Spike’s going to give you something to drink.”

“Doesn’t work like that,” Spike said. “I wish it did. I…”

Willow glared at him like he was taking away Tara’s life, bleeding it out of her before her eyes.

He knelt beside her and bit his own wrist. “I… I have to drink her, first.”

“Then do it. Hurry!”

“The chip…”

“Here. This. Hurry!” Willow thrust her hand into his face; it was smeared with blood from trying to hold Tara’s wound closed.

Spike grimaced, but he licked Willow’s palm. Arterial blood. Tara’s heart stopped. He still held his wrist to her slack lips, let his sluggish blood drip between them, watching as rapt as Willow, wanting almost as much as her for it to work.

The heart was stopped. Its silence rang. “It’s not going to work. She’s too far gone, Red. We’re too late.”

The next thing he knew, Spike had fallen against the wall. He hissed and rolled out of the sun from the window. Willow stood, hands raised, and incongruously, clouds were forming against the staid white ceiling, roiling with black and thunder.

The light from the windows was blocked, the room dimmed to storm-shadows as Willow argued with a god. Spike tried to stand and was thrown back again by invisible hands. He stayed down, staring in disbelief as the clouds faded and Willow stood, reduced back to a normal girl, panting.

She strode out of the room like a woman on a mission.

Too late, he scrambled after her, fear making him want to keep his distance from the witch. She was out the front door before he made it to the top of the stairs.

He went back to Willow and Tara’s room, back to peer out their windows and see if Buffy was, indeed, all right. The view should have been perfect from there.

He saw Xander wringing his hands while paramedics carried the slayer away on a gurney. She was all trussed up in white, no blood that he could see visible.

Spike leaned against the wall, feeling more trapped than ever by the sun.

He was still there, watching the shadows creep across the lawn and waiting for a phone to ring, when the front door banged open in a familiar way, followed by the thunk of a thrown back-pack and Dawn’s cheerful, “It’s me!”

Dawn stared at him as he came down the stairs. “You don’t want to go up there,” he said.

“You have blood on you.”

Spike froze in his tracks and looked down. The open wound on his wrist still seeped, and there were dried drips snaking up his arm to the elbow. Of course that was why she stared. “I’ll get cleaned up,” he said, and turned on his heel. “Stay down here.”

But Dawn followed him as surely as iron fillings seeking a magnet. (As surely as a teenager seeks trouble.) “It’s on your mouth. Spike? What am I not supposed to…”

He turned just in time to see her peer into the open door, to see her see one pale wrist laying limp on the carpet. “Niblet, no! No! Stay out here with me.”

Dawn pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped into the room, slowly, as a girl possessed.

Then she made a small, strangled sound.

Spike rushed to her side and they collapsed together to the floor at Tara’s side.

“Ah… ah…” Dawn’s sobs choked off as she tried to speak.

“Turn your face away, pet. Turn away. She wouldn’t want…”

“Tah… tah… Tara?”

And then Dawn broke down completely.

He sat and held her and let his shirt get soaked wet. He thought about seeing Buffy on the rubble below Glory’s tower. He thought about Joyce. He should be as locked out of human grief as he was the sunshine, yet here he was, grown attached, grown fond, and suffering the consequences thereof. Like sticking your hand in the sun, he thought, was loving the living.

He started to stand, to draw Dawn up. “No!” she said, pulling back on his arms. “No, Spike. We can’t – we can’t leave her alone.”

Nodding at the perfect ill-logic of it, he settled back down against the wall and wrapped Dawn in his arms so they could both see Tara lying there.

“Tried to give her my blood. Maybe… maybe it’ll work,” he said. His voice was rough and he didn’t sound even as convinced as he was, but Dawn nodded against his chest and squeezed him just a little tighter.

***

It was hours later when Buffy and Xander came into the room. They both stared at the body. Buffy said, “Oh god. Oh god. We – Xander?”

“Police. Calling.” He disappeared.

“Oh god. Dawnie. Spike – you shouldn’t be letting her see this.”

“I had to stay,” Dawn said. “I couldn’t leave her alone.”

“Oh god, Dawnie.” Buffy took her sister into her arms and drew her out of the room. “You shouldn’t have to see that. You’ve seen enough for one – for ever.”

Spike solemnly followed them to the kitchen and stood over the sink. His morning blood was sticky and smelling like a charnel house. He squeezed lemon-fresh soap all over it and turned on the water. He had to clean the blood off his hands, anyway, may as well clean up the evidence of his morning’s failure.

It was so silent all three heard Xander on the phone with the police in the living room. “Yes, related to the shooting this morning. We didn’t know. Yes. Thank you. As soon as possible, please. Thank you.” He sounded grown-up, calm. They were all grateful. They heard the phone return to its cradle and his measured, quiet steps back into the kitchen. Spike had turned the water off.

Xander leaned against the wall by the baking rack. “They’re sending someone over to – someone to take the body.”

They all nodded.

Spike dried his hands.

Dawn broke the silence. “Where’s Willow?”

Spike frowned, seeing Buffy look to Xander with a sudden pleading expression, and Xander’s face darken. “She left here in quite a huff,” Spike said.

“Yeah,” Xander said, “She's off the wagon, big time. Warren's a dead man if she finds him.

Dawn stepped away from her sister for the first time since taking her hands upstairs. “Good.”

“Dawn, don't say that-“

“Why not? I'd do it myself if I could.”

Buffy looked, without success, for support from the silent men. “Because you don't really feel that way.“

“Yes, I do. And you should too. He _killed_ Tara - and he nearly killed you. He needs to pay.”

Xander raised a hand toward Dawn. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

“Xander!”

“I'm just saying - he's just as bad as any vampire you've sent to dustville.”

Spike tossed the dishtowel at the counter. “Everyone mark your calendars: I agree with Xander.”

“Spike! No. Stop, everyone, think about this!”

“What’s to think about? The witch is getting her vengeance on. You’ve wanted these three out of your hair for months. Now all you have to do is sit back and wait.”

“Out of my hair, yes, not playing at being villains, yes. Dead, no! Being a slayer doesn't give me a license to kill. Warren's human.”

Dawn and Spike spoke in unison, and almost the exact same inflection. “So?”

“So the human world has its own rules for dealing with people like him.”

Xander folded his arms. “Yeah, we all know how well those rules work.”

“Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. We can't control the universe.” She turned to Spike, palms up. “You said you’d trust my judgment on moral issues. Why can’t _you_ , at least, back me up on this?”

“Xander and Dawn have souls, and they agree with me.”

“It’s not about having souls. It’s about doing what’s right.”

“And sometimes what’s right is stepping back and letting a mightily brassed-off witch do your dirty work.”

“Shockingly, peroxide-head is right. We stay here, we meet with the cops; we do what normal people do, and wait to see how it turns out.”

Buffy threw up her arms. “Fine. Fine. You all want to do the morally ambiguous thing, stay here and have sandwiches. I’m going after Willow. Alone.”

Spike grimaced. He looked at Dawn, standing defiant, and shook his head. “Sister’s right, Bit,” he said. He didn’t really mean it, and Dawn glared at him to show she could tell, but he said it, and followed Buffy to the front door.

“It’s my fault,” Spike said. “Wasn’t fast enough. Again. Tried to get to you, then changed my mind, dithered on it like a bleeding idiot. If I’d been a few moments sooner…”

“You could have, what? Stopped the bullet.”

“She wouldn’t have had to stay dead.”

Buffy stopped, in the process of getting her keys out of the disk by the door. She turned and stared at him. “What did you say?”

“If I’d have got there in time, could have turned her. Then we’d just be waitin’ for Glinda to wake up.”

“No,” Buffy said. She shook her head. “No.”

“Buffy?” Spike reached for her hand.

She flinched away from him. “Oh my god, you’re a monster. Even now – you’re still a monster. Why do I keep forgetting?”

“No, love, listen…”

But she burst out the front door and was running in the late afternoon sun, as fast as she could, away from him.

Spike turned to find Xander shaking his head. “You really, really don’t get it. Now I almost feel sorry for you.”

“But you agreed with me, on lettin’ Red take Warren out!”

Xander just shook his head and walked past Spike, to follow Buffy down the street.

Dawn stood in the hallway, her arms wrapped around her. “You were going to make Tara a vampire? Like Jesse?”

“Who’s Jesse?”

Dawn shook her head. She started up the stairs in her typical gallop, then stopped, three steps from the top. “I can’t… Tara…” she turned around and sat on the steps. “Tara is up there.”

Spike settled on a step two down from her feet. “You really wouldn’t want Tara back as a vampire?”

“How can you even ask that?”

“I’m a vampire; you never seemed to mind before.”

Dawn sniffled, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I can’t talk to you about this right now,” she said, and stood.

He touched her leg as she stepped over him. “I could have saved her.”

“You would have damned her! I… oh, Spike! You’re a monster!” Dawn hurried the rest of the way down the stairs and fled into the kitchen and out the back door.

“Yeah?” Spike said, in delayed response. “Course I’m a monster. Vampire. Look it up.”

He ran a hand over his hair and sighed.

On the mantle, his soul glowed in faint iridescence, casting blue and gold shadows that ran like butterflies over the other curios and photographs. He’d insisted that Buffy take it back and, after much argument, it had been deposited there – in her possession but not secreted away.

He wondered if other souls would look different – would Angel’s have little red flecks where his had blue? And here it was, he could no longer deny that a soul was a thing – a thing he once had inside himself and now had inside this magical snow-globe; but what was it?

He sat on the arm of the couch, watching the light play and swirl like trapped butterflies. “Pretty little thing,” he mused, “How can you be the difference between a monster and a man?”

***

Spike had to wait for the authorities and fake his way through questions about who he was and why he was there and not Miss Summers. “Just a friend. Neighbor. Address? Oh, uh I live in Rest… I mean, on Oak Street. Three, uh, something, Oak. Just moved here, yeah? I’m British?” (Sometimes, that got him out of jams it really shouldn’t.)

The cops took down all his information – such as it was – and looked at him in that “We know you’re guilty of _something_ ” way, but there wasn’t much they could do about it just then, much to Spike’s relief.

It was well past nightfall when they finally lifted Tara’s body over the threshold and into the waiting ambulance to take her to the hospital and her autopsy.

Spike stood alone in the dark living room – he hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights. The phone rang.

Not knowing what else to do, he answered it. “Yeah?”

There was a pause. “Spike, is that how you answer MY phone?”

He smiled, despite it all. “Summers Residence, how may I direct your very important call?” he cooed in as hoity toity an accent as he could muster.

“Put Dawn on. Then I need you to go to the jail as soon as you can. Find which cell Jonathan and Andrew are in and watch them! Willow is on her way to get them.”

Spike bit his lip. “Dawn ran out. Want me to find her first?”

“You let Dawn leave? Spike! I don’t believe this!”

“I’ll find her. I’ll find her, make sure she’s safe, and then I’ll head to the jail,” Spike said. “You can count on me.”

“God, I wish,” was the tired response, and the line went dead.

Dawn’s scent trail led, not surprisingly, to Janice’s house, and he could faintly hear her voice in a second-floor room, recounting all the horrors of the day to her friend. Their shadows flickered and loomed large against the floral-print wallpaper; they were hunched over a candle in a thick red glass holder. It was a cozy scene. He turned his back on it and walked downtown, trying to remember if he knew where Sunnydale kept its jail.

Did Sunnydale _have_ a jail? Most of its criminal element dissolved on impact. He walked toward the police station.

Next door to the police station, Willow hovered in front of a building Spike had always thought was a defunct department store. Bricks crumbled in front of her.

“Witch!’ He shouted. “Red!” He jogged up to her. She turned, eyes black and narrowed at him. “Not a good look for you, Red. And what the hell are you doing? There’re perfectly good doors and windows in that wall. You tryin’ to get in, or just being a drama queen?”

She turned back to her task, not even acknowledging him.

“Well,” he shouted to no one in particular, “I tried.”

Buffy ran up the street. “What are you doing?” she shouted at him in passing as she ran to the entrance of the jail. “Xander’s trying to get us a car! Around back!” Buffy then disappeared into the darkness of the jail.

Sure enough, Xander Harris was in the police parking lot, trying door handles. Spike reached passed him, grabbed a door, and wrenched it open.

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, sure, if you’re going to be artless about it.”

Spike rolled his eyes and slipped into the driver’s seat to hotwire the police cruiser. “What’s your deal, Harris? I thought you were with me on letting Red have her revenge.”

“I wouldn’t expect the evil undead to understand a little thing called ethics,” Xander said, ducking into the passenger seat. “Drive, Bo. Daisy’s got her hands full.”

“Getting mighty tired of this ‘you won’t understand’ bollocks. You were all right with Willow killing the nerds. What’s changed?”

There was something grim about Harris, Spike suddenly noticed, and a faint smell of blood and death around him. “She went too far.”

“How far is too far? Dead is still dead, innit?”

The engine roared to life. Spike smirked in satisfaction and spun the car out of the lot as fast as its police-issue engine could take it.

“Look, soulless – you just know, all right? If you had a soul, you’d just know.”

Xander was surprised to find Spike regarding him carefully. The car jolted to a stop in front of the jail. Spike shrugged. “All right. I buy that.”

Buffy and Anya ran out of the building, pushing Jonathan and Andrew before them toward the appropriated police car. “Don’t bother buckling – just go go go!” Buffy dove in last onto Xander’s lap.

“We’re going to outrun magic with a V-6? That’s our plan?”

“We’ll come up with another one while you’re driving,” Buffy pushed at Spike’s arm.

Four minutes on the road, the car jolted. Spike looked in the rear-view mirror to see a tractor-trailer rig following them, Willow standing on its hood. Oh, classic! He laughed, grinding through gears as he pushed the car to do its best. There was nothing like a good chase, a high-performance car and not caring if it still ran the next day.

The screams and shouted arguments just added to the atmosphere.

“Magic box,” Buffy said. “Turn left.”

Two wheels left the pavement and someone was shouting about letting the undead drive. Sounded like a girl. Must have been Andrew.

Willow descended into the road in front of them like a gently falling leaf, her hands out. Spike revved the engine and headed straight for her.

Buffy yanked the wheel. They tore up a row of parking meters and slammed to a stop against a concrete bench outside the magic shop.

Spike looked at Buffy. “What?”

Anya appeared in the front door of the shop, holding a book. “How’d she…?”

They all ran into the shop. “Right,” Spike muttered, taking up the rear as his door was permanently crushed closed and he really did have to pull a Dukes of Hazard and crawl out the window. “I’d just _know_.”


	10. Souls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter! I know, I know, no warning from me. :(
> 
> Hope you all like it. It was an interesting journey trying to get to where I wanted to go with this. (And deciding, really, where I wanted to go in the first place!)

“Xander saved the world.”

Giles looked up from the dining table with irritation. “Yes, he did. Could you please stop repeating that every fifteen seconds? Some of us are trying to get work done.”

“Just can’t wrap my head around it,” Spike shrugged.

He was pacing the front of the house, at a loss for something to do while Giles arranged a flight back to England and Buffy…

Buffy wasn’t talking to him for some reason. After he’d saved her and Dawn from a mess of magically-conjured dirt monsters (and wasn’t that going to dull the swords!), she’d gone off to the hospital to watch over Tara’s corpse and make sure it didn’t rise. He was 90% sure it wouldn’t, but she insisted on going, anyway.

Dawn was upstairs with Willow. Xander – Xander had saved the feckin’ world! Wherever Xander had gone off to, Spike couldn’t quite face him just yet. And Giles was no fit company for anyone.

“If you insist on pacing like that, do it somewhere else,” Giles said, just to underscore Spike’s point.

So Spike went upstairs.

Dawn was alone in her room, on her stomach on her bed, writing furiously in a notebook with one of those long pencils with fluff on the end. “Hey, bit.”

“Don’t talk to me, I’m in the zone.”

“Think they’ll slay me if I go check in on the witch?”

“Go right ahead. Everyone’s so concerned about WILLOW.”

Spike bit his lip and tried not to laugh. “All right, and how are you, Niblet?”

“In the zone. Leave.”

He shook his head at the intractable nature of “the zone” and a young journalist in it. Her pencil scratched passionately over the page like a hamster making his cedar-chip nest.

At least he didn’t feel alone in not understanding the vagaries of teenage girls.

He pushed open the door the witches’… witch’s room. The stain on the carpet was so small and brown it was hard to believe what it represented. It looked like someone had spilled a cola, but Spike’s senses caught the blood-smell. His nose had a one-track mind where blood was concerned. It brought the memory of the scene to him so clearly: the body turning from friend to just food, wasted, spoiled, discarded.

Willow was stretched on the bed, cross-wise, a pillow wrapped in her arms, her red-rimmed eyes on the ceiling. “Go away,” she said.

“That’s a recurrent theme today.” Spike sat on the vanity seat. “Running out of places to go away to, so unless you want to blacken the sun or destroy the sky or something like that, think I’ll bother you for a while.”

She sat up. “That isn’t funny.”

“Did you hear me laugh? What is it with you people and destroying the world? As evil plots go, it’s rather like pissing in your own beer. Do you just forget that you are IN the world?”

“Stop it.”

“Or?”

She threw the pillow at him. It hit his chest with a powerful scent of Tara and tears. He set it in his lap. “You think I don’t get it? Lost a loved one or twelve in my time, Red. Feels like the hole ripped out of your life will never fill up, but it does.”

“You _don’t_ know how it feels. I had all this power.” She looked at her hands. “All this power, and I couldn’t do the one thing I wanted. I couldn’t save her.”

“I do know how that feels, pet. Know it too well.”

“No.” Willows eyes narrowed. “You don’t know _anything_.” She stood. “You talk and you smile and you cry, but it’s just a puppet. You’re nothing, Spike. You’re empty.”

“See here, I’m not the one went on a murderous rampage most recently in this room.” He stood and matched her glare.

“I’ve seen inside you and it's empty,” Willow said, her eyes flashing dark. “That’s what Tara would have been, if you had turned her – empty. Like Warren’s robots. Would you have been happy to have her like that? I bet you would.”

“Turning her was your idea, queen witch, and I’d like to point out…”

Spike thought he heard – or saw – thunderheads gathering in her eyes. It was a bit like the beginning of what it felt like to fall into Drusilla’s gaze. He shook his head and blinked to free himself from it. “Hell with you. I’m not empty. You’re the one has a gaping hole in her heart. Excuse me for trying to help.”

He stomped down the steps to see Buffy standing at the bottom, in the process of taking her purse off. They paused, caught in each other’s gaze like rival tomcats not yet bristled to fight.

And then Buffy looked down. She put the purse on the end-table and walked into the dining room, calling out to Giles, who answered her.

Spike couldn’t bring himself to make out their quiet, calm discussion. He walked the rest of the way down the stairs and looked at them, like looking in on a whole other world. Buffy had her hands clasped, her face down. Giles walked to her, touched her hand, drew her to sit in a chair by his, by the detritus of papers and schedules that marked Giles’ morning full of planning.

“So it went all right, then?” Spike asked, too loud.

“She’s still dead, if that’s what you mean,” Buffy said, rubbing a hand under her eyes. “I… I had to put a stake in her heart, just to be sure. I hope the coroners don’t…” Buffy stopped, leaning forward a bit. Giles quickly wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“There there,” said Giles. “Tara would understand. You did what you had to.”

Spike bit his lip. “Well, then, no harm, no foul, right?”

Two angry sets of eyes stared at him.

“May I ask once again why this creature is allowed in the house?”

“Giles, don’t,” Buffy rested her cheek on the older man’s arm. “He’s here.”

“That’s right, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Giles gave Spike a look of pure venom. “If you’ll not be needing anything, like a return to your senses, I’ll be upstairs, trying to catch up on a day’s worth of sleep. It’s ten o’clock in England right now.”

Buffy walked him to the stairs, talking in low, hushed tones about flight times, meals, and funeral arrangements.

Spike found himself pacing the living room, or meaning to, anyway, and stopping, almost inevitably to stare at his soul on the mantelpiece.

Because, quite frankly, how did you not stop and stare when the words ‘soul’ and ‘mantelpiece’ were in the same sentence? The thing gave him the willies. Moreso, he couldn’t stop feeling for its absence, like poking a missing tooth, except there wasn’t even a hole there to be felt. He didn’t feel empty. He didn’t feel like a different person than who he was growing up a century ago in London. Hell, he could remember those times? He closed his eyes and vividly recalled a summer day, the feel of the sun, the smell of dried manure on the streets, the wool skirts of his governess as she led him to the park, rubbing against the back of his hand, her cotton gloves soaked with sweat.

How could he remember all that and not be who he was? Even if he did occasionally wonder why his young self didn’t kill the governess, take her purse, and become the most popular boy on the block buying ices for everyone.

He imagined the cheers, the shrug of the unscrupulous vendor as he took the pile of money. He smiled.

“I said,” Buffy practically shouted in his ear, causing Spike to jump and turn around. She sighed. “Are you just going to stand there all night?”

“Yeah, well, there was a lack of plans,” Spike replied, scratching his elbow. “Get the watcher tucked in?”

She shook her head and walked to the kitchen.

“Buffy?”

She groaned, head in the refrigerator. “We have four mouths to feed – five if you eat. And all we have in here are condiments, one diet soda, and a fuzzy pizza box.”

“We’ll go shopping,” Spike said.

She straightened and looked at him. He expected an argument, but she just sighed and closed the ‘fridge. “Yeah, all right.”

***

First Buffy had to check with Dawn to see if she wanted to go with (“No!”) and Willow to see if she was okay on her own. (“Why does everyone keep treating me like a time bomb? I’m sorry, all right?” and a profusion of tears.)

Spike and Buffy shared a moment of solidarity in quickly closing that door and moving away from it. Then Buffy poked her head in on Giles, who was already fast asleep on her bed, glasses off, face turned to the side and looking younger in the peace of sleep.

“They’re so cute at that age,” Spike whispered, only to get an elbow in the stomach as Buffy closed the door.

It was six by the time they got their list together. “Why do we need a list?”

“Because I don’t want to come home with Wheatabix and frozen buffalo wings.”

“Nothing wrong with Wheatabix. Good for growing Niblets.”

And then, strangely, they were on the road, Spike huddled under a blanket in the back seat while Buffy drove to the supermarket.

“This is weird,” she said. “I mean, not just you and me, going to the market like we’re normal people, but we’re going in the daylight. I can’t remember the last time I grocery shopped and it wasn’t at that disgusting Lou’s Buy-Rite. Ugh. I think the roaches wear sandals in there.” The car swerved wildly around a corner. “Oops. Stop sign. Sure you don’t want to come up in the front seat?”

“Perfectly content to experience your driving down here, love.”

“Hey! Darn it, when did they put a stop light there? Okay, well no one saw it, we’re safe. You know I keep checking the rear-view mirror for you? Talk about slayer 101, Buffy. But it’s weird, I mean, I’m talking to you, I can finally talk, and I think – woah!” They braked sharply. “Uff. Sorry. I just mean, it’s easier to talk to you, somehow, when I can’t see you.”

Spike decided to just stay in the footwell, where he’d fallen, and adjusted the blanket to cover his legs again. “That’s marvelous. Just tell me when we get there, yeah?”

“That creepy Lou guy propositioned me, er, well, he propositioned you, actually, through me. I was like, EW! I need chlorine bleach on my brain after picturing that man naked. I swear I’m never going there again, even if I have to drive to Oxnard to get late night groceries.”

The car swerved and jolted over something, then braked hard, throwing them both forward and back. “We’re here,” Buffy said.

“Oh, really? I could hardly tell.”

“What? That was a perfect parking job. Okay, I’m opening the side door now. Ready? One, two…”

Spike suffered the indignity of dashing frantically for the bright-colored awning of the Mega Food Store, dropping the blanket on top of the stack of shopping baskets and shaking the smoke out of his duster.

Buffy selected a cart and they stepped together into the cool, bright world of American Supermarket, complete with a muzak version of “Paint it Black” piping over their heads.

“Lord, it would be better if they played something bad to begin with,” Spike glared at the ceiling speakers.

“Like your music, maybe?” Buffy smirked at him and took the shopping list out of her purse.

He watched her frown at the paper and look up at the produce bins before them. She looked so serious. Spike licked his lip. “Have you forgiven me?”

“No. Yes. I’m on hold, right now, Spike. I can’t feel anything more today. First item is milk. Uh… how much money do we have?” Buffy glanced back at him.

“Enough,” he said.

“Spike, come on. I know where you used to get money and it’s been a while.”

“I said I’d take you grocery shopping, and I made sure I had enough money when I made the offer.”

Buffy turned, her hand dropping from the cart handle. “Oh my god, you’ve been…” she grimaced, “working.”

“Buffy.”

“Tell me where you got it.”

“It was days ago.”

Her brow crinkled into Buffy Determined Face. “Tell me.”

“Lou. All right? Lou gave me a hundred for services rendered. I knew you’d need the money and I didn’t know where else to get it. He hasn’t exactly been shy about what he wants.”

“Oh god,” Buffy said, in a very small voice. She let the shopping list fall to the floor. Spike dove to catch it. She walked, stiffly, toward the exit.

“Buffy, wait!” He grabbed her elbow as she passed, swinging her around to face him.

“No. No, I can’t do this any more, Spike. I have to…” She gestured helplessly, “I have to save the world. I have to provide for Dawn. I can’t do that and live with your moral lapses.”

He shifted his shoulders, lowering his head toward her menacingly. “How is this a moral lapse? You told me to do it.”

She gaped at him. “ _I_ told you to? No. No I really didn’t. This – wait, is this a bite thing? Oh please tell me it’s a bite thing.” She didn’t wait for him to answer, reading it plainly on his face. “Oh god, it’s not. Great. Just great. I taught you to be a big fat ho. Wonderful savior of the world I turned out to be. Not to mention legal guardian, just… great.” She threw up her arms and turned, storming purposefully toward the exit.

“Buffy, wait. Explain it to me. Please. Just.” He dashed in front of her, nearly into the sunlight that streamed through the large windows at the head of the store. “Just explain to me why this is different. You wanted me to get money for you, and not to hurt or trick anyone to do it, so that’s what I did. How is this different?”

“Are you throwing this in my face on purpose, or do you really not know?”

“I really don’t know. Please, love. Just explain it to me. I won’t do it again, and we’ll get some milk and meat and feed all the little kiddies back home like we set out to.”

Buffy looked pained. “I can explain, I guess, maybe, but how can I expect you ever to understand why?”

“You’re right. There’s things I don’t understand. I can’t even start to wrap my head around them. It’s like a surface I just slide off while everyone else goes right through, effortlessly. It’s a disability and I have to work around it, that’s all, pet. There’s folks can’t walk and folks can’t read. I can’t, well, ‘moral’.”

“No, Spike, you can’t.” She shook her head. “And I’m tired of pretending otherwise. Go home. Your home. I’ll buy what I can with what I have and when I get home… don’t be there.” She turned back to the cart.

“Buffy!” He jogged after her as she pushed determinedly toward the dairy section.

“No,” she said.

“But, love, the money’s already here.”

“No!” She spun around and stopped him with a hard hand to his chest. “I had to stick a piece of wood into the body of someone I love today. So no, Spike, I’m not in the mood to give you chance number twelve. You blew it. Now go.”

“It's just another little thing, love. They’re all little…”

“Go!” She pushed him, hard, sending him flying down the aisle, a pile of Velveeta boxes following him to his rest at the end of the aisle. All around, shopping carts stopped and people stared, except Buffy, who turned and continued her way toward the milk.

Spike picked himself up.

A four-year-old hanging off his mother’s arm stage-whispered, “He got hit by a girl!”

Spike stared at the kid, who was staring back at him in something almost like awe. “Yeah,” he said, “You remember that, tyke. Girls hit hard.”

Outside the sun was setting, painting the parking lot orange and gold. He picked his blanket up from where it had been kicked behind the stand of hand-baskets and draped it over his shoulders.

***

Buffy felt miserable, coming home with milk, a loaf of bread, and hot dogs. It felt like the easiest way to turn six dollars into dinner.

It wasn’t until after the amazing mostly-condiments meal from hell that she walked into the living room, talking with Dawn about cooking ideas, and noticed the card on the mantle.

The Orb of Thesula was gone from its pedestal. A folded piece of cardstock was stuck diagonally in its place.

“What’s that?” Dawn asked, trying to peer over Buffy’s shoulder. Buffy turned so her back was to the fireplace.

The card was ripped on one side – taken off of some larger piece. The handwriting was surprisingly neat, almost antique, despite the words that were written there. “I’m tired of pretending, too. Pretending I know what the fuck you are talking about when you talk about souls. So I’m going to go find out. And if this bullshit means that I’ll never be me again, I hope you like the bloke who comes back. Spike.”

Buffy sat down, right there, on the fireplace fender, the card pressed against her stomach. It was a long time before Dawn, or later Giles, could get her to let anyone else read it.

 

The End


End file.
